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Karen Gardner was perplexed when she received her mail-in primary ballot. As a life-long Republican voter and chairwoman of the Bernardsville Republican Municipal Committee, Gardner wasnt expecting to find a list of Democrats inside the envelope.

The slate of candidates was all Democrat from Joe Biden down to dogcatcher, but on the upper right it clearly stated it was a Republican ballot and it had my name and correct information on the return envelope, Gardner said.

Of the 2,400 registered Republicans in Bernardsville, 500 to 700 of them received erroneous mail-in ballots, listing the Democratic candidates instead of the Republicans.

Gardner brought the issue to the Somerset County Republican Organization on June 13. The organizations chairman Al Gaburo notified the county clerk who promised to remedy the mistake.

The error originated with Reliance Graphics, Inc., the printing company which sent out Somerset Countys ballots. Normally, the county clerks office prepares the ballots themselves, but shopped the task to Reliance this year because of Gov. Phil Murphys executive order that every voter receive a vote-by-mail ballot for the delayed July 7 primary election.

If we had had a greater lead time when we were sending out these ballots, we would have been able to do the ballot insertion in-house and this error would have been caught, Somerset County Clerk Steve Peter said.

Corrected ballots with a slip explaining the error were sent back out to all 2,400 Bernardsville Republicans on June 16. The erroneous ballots will be voided, and even so, Republican voters cannot cast votes for Democrats in a New Jersey primary. Reliance will swallow the reprinting and postage costs, at no added expense to taxpayers, Peter said.

Peter said that there was no issue with the PDF proof Reliance sent over before the ballots were mailed or with the ballots sent to the clerks office for distribution. Bob Fetterly, the president of Reliance, called it a human error, but would not elaborate on what exactly happened or why the error only affected 500 to 700 Bernardsville Republicans.

It was a misprint, Fetterly said, whose company serves six New Jersey counties, including Middlesex and Essex. Human error. We mailed over 1.5 million ballots in the last couple of weeks and 500 went astray. So we apologized for it, but it was a human error we had a success rate of 99.99 percent.

Bernardsville Republicans are displeased with the mistake and think it will undermine voters confidence in local elections as well as lose Republican votes in this primary.

There has been widespread anxiety about the 2020 election due to allegations of voter suppression and foreign interference in 2016. The coronavirus has interrupted in-person voting, adding additional strain on elections.

You cant have printer errors. I think thats a problem said Bernardsvilles Republican Mayor Jane Canose, though she explained that she does not suspect fraud.

Peter vows that the error will not happen again and that there has never been a problem when the clerks office handles the ballots.

Come November, I have implored the governor and everybody in the legislature that I can talk to that if we do have an all or mainly vote-by-mail election that that decision be made no later than August 1st so that we would have adequate time to prepare these ballots and we can do the insertion in our office to ensure quality control.

Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.

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Misprinted ballots with Democratic candidates mailed to Republicans in this N.J. town - NJ.com