San Diego County's top election official has issued $427,000 dollars in refunds to cities, school districts, and hospitals. Registrar of Voters Deborah Seiler says her office overcharged for ballot materials in the November 2006 election. KPBS reporter Andrew Phelps explains.
Seiler says miscommunication led to a duplication of effort and a duplication of charges. Two companies did the same job of translating ballots into different languages. Taxpayers had to shoulder that extra cost.
Seiler says the error was uncovered several months ago, but the county concentrated on renegotiating its contracts with the vendors.
Seiler: Our first order of business, as soon as we uncovered this, was to fix it going forward, because, you know, the February election was rapidly approaching.
Seiler says that process delayed the refunds.
The biggest single refund goes to the San Diego Community College District, which gets back $78,000 in overcharges.
Andrew Phelps, KPBS News.
