Maryland’s mail-in ballot error was caused by a printer in Minnesota

Representatives at a Minnesota printing company took full responsibility Thursday for an error that required 447,000 mail-in ballots to be resent to Maryland voters and vowed new procedures had been put in place to ensure no future problems.

Officials of Taylor Print & Visual Impressions said they have rectified the issue and are prepared for a flawless general election. The mea culpa from came during a virtual meeting of the Maryland State Board of Elections.

Traci Stevenson, director of corporate strategy for printer, told board members that she and another employee came to “speak plainly about what happened.”

“Because of a setting in our system, some voters received a ballot that didn’t match their party,” Stevenson said in her opening comments. “It was an honest mistake, but it was our mistake, and we own that.”

Angie Kalaytowicz, executive vice president for customer technology solutions at the company, told the board the issue was the result of a combination of equipment failure and human error and was unforeseen despite testing.

“This did not come up as a red flag during our testing,” Kalaytowicz told the board. “Since then, we’ve taken a much deeper look at our process and implemented additional safeguards and additional checks — both automated and human checks — to ensure that we expand our validations and that this never happens again.”

In May, the company sent an initial batch to voters who asked for mail-in ballots for the primary. The number included permanent vote-by-mail voters as well as those who asked to vote by mail this year.

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It was soon discovered that some voters were mailed ballots for a party different than the one they were registered for.

“The moment we learned of the problem, we stopped production, found the cause, and fixed the setting,” Stevenson said.

Neither state election officials nor Taylor could determine the extent of the problem. The fix was to reprint and resend 447,000 replacement ballots to cover everyone who might have been affected.

“Every bit of this was done at our expense. Not a single dollar fell on Maryland taxpayers,” Stevenson said.

But that was not the end of the matter. The company later discovered that “a group of voters received duplicate ballots, and in one case, a jammed ballot accidentally stayed in the mailstream instead of being destroyed,” Stevenson explained.

One of those duplicate replacement ballots arrived at the home of a Maryland Matters reporter.

Stevenson and Kalaytowicz spoke to the board and took questions for nearly 30 minutes.

In one exchange, Jim Shalleck, a Republican and vice chair of the board, asked questions of the duo he said were submitted by voters. Some were basic questions about the company’s 50-year history. Some were partisan inquiries about the political leanings of other states where Taylor had contracts. Others focused on “any foreign investment or foreign ownership” since the company was founded.

Both representatives said there was no foreign investors or ownership.

Glen Taylor, a billionaire and former Minnesota Republican senator, is founder, and chairman of the company and majority owner of the business. He also is the owner of the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper.

Shalleck also asked if state elections officials contributed to the error.

“No,” said Stevenson.

“You take complete blame,” said Shalleck.

“Yes, that’s correct, sir,” she said.

The snafu spurred voter confusion, conspiracy theories, and criticism from President Donald Trump down to local candidates.

Trump, in a factually inaccurate tirade, blasted the state board in a post on his Truth Social account that erroneously called the mail-in ballots “illegal.” He said he would ask the Department of Justice to open an investigation.

Another call for an investigation came locally from the head of the League of Women Voters of Maryland. But after Thursday’s \board meeting, Nikki Tyree, executive director of the organization, said she was satisfied with the public explanation from Taylor Print & Visual Impressions.

“The League is encouraged by the steps taken by SBE to understand what happened to Maryland’s mail-in ballots,” Tyree said. “While we believe more could have been done in their response, and questions remain, SBE has demonstrated the shared goal of keeping voters confident in our elections.”

Not everyone was satisfied.

Vincent Gisriel Jr., an unaffiliated voter from the Eastern Shore, told the board Thursday that there should be an outside review.

“I strongly suggest that the members of the State Board of Elections call for an outside, independent investigation of the entire matter,” Vincent said during a public comment session. “First, it will serve the public interest to do so, and foremost, the citizens of Maryland deserve full transparency.”

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.