Baldwin School District mistakenly mails out extra ballots

There was recently some confusion in regards to the Baldwin School District budget and trustee ballots that were mailed out for the June 9 election.

A number of ballots — the amount of which were not known  — were mistakenly mailed to residents in neighboring communities, including Rockville Centre and Oceanside, according to Newsday.

In compliance with the governor’s executive order on school district elections, Baldwin School District representatives explained to the Herald, the district sent ballots to the list of names and addresses of registered and “qualified voters” provided by the Nassau County Board of Elections.

“We were very disappointed to learn after the ballots were mailed out that the list of ‘qualified voters’ the Board of Elections provided us did not meet those expectations,” district representatives said in a statement. “It has come to our attention that there were some gaps in this process, which led to the database provided by the County Elections officials including addresses that were not part of the Baldwin School District. As a result, we have put extra emphasis on our already rigorous and thorough process of reviewing absentee ballots to only accept and count ballots from qualified Baldwin school district residents.”

This was the first time the district has conducted an election in this fashion, representatives said, adding that all returned ballots would go through the following process:

— The address would be confirmed to reside within school district boundaries. If they are not, they will be logged and the exclusion will be checked by an on-site Board of Elections inspector.

— If the ballot is confirmed to be within the Baldwin School District, the voter will be logged into the elections software to confirm they are a valid, qualified voter. If they are, the vote will count. If not, they will be logged and the exclusion will be checked by a Board of Elections inspector.

“This all absentee-ballot election process is unprecedented and we are already taking steps to assure that the lessons learned in this process will be applied to all future school district elections,” said Robert Leonard, a spokesman for the school district. “Our highest priority is providing the residents of our community with the ability to securely and confidently express themselves through our election process.”