County clerk acknowledges error in election materials
Lassen County Clerk Julie Bustamante acknowledged an error on the March 3, 2020 Presidential Primary Sample Ballot and Vote-by-Mail ballots and said her office is following direction from the California Secretary of State’s Office to correct the error.
She said her office is preparing a press release that will be distributed later today, Thursday, Feb. 13.
In the election materials, State Assembly District 1 candidate PK “Paul” Dhanuka, a Redding, California doctor, is listed as a Democrat when he should have been designated as No Party Preference. Dhanuka faces incumbent Republican Megan Dahle and Democrat Elizabeth Betancourt in the March 3 election.
“I did make an error,” Bustamante said. “I have contacted the candidates, and we’re sending out notices to the voters who received mail ballots. We’ll be posting notices in the precincts and in the office and passing out a flyer with the correction to every voter who receives a ballot from this point forward … The secretary of state said those are sufficient remedies.”
According to a story in the Redding Record Searchlight, Dhanuka said, “So it’s a public trust issue, and election integrity issue. To maintain the election integrity and the public trust, it has to be redone. They have to invalidate all the … ballots sent out and reprint them and send out new ballots.”
On his Facebook page, Joseph Turner, chair of the Lassen County Republican Central wrote “This ‘error’ is gross negligence, undermines our electoral process, humiliating to the county and it is completely unacceptable … I am publicly calling for the immediate resignation of Lassen County Clerk Julie Bustamante and for the county board of supervisors to schedule a special primary election to fill this pending vacancy.”
For an updated story, see the Tuesday, Feb. 18 issue of the Lassen County Times.
