Have you opened your voter guide yet? You should check for errors

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (KESQ) – As November's general election inches closer, official voter information guides are being mailed out to voters across the state. As one Rancho Mirage woman found out, though, not each guide looks the same.

Maryan Baker reached out to KESQ with a peculiar problem. She received her voter guide in the mail, but when she peered inside, she was shocked to see dozens of pages missing. A gap in her booklet stretched from page 57 to 120. Several swaths of duplicate pages were mixed in, too.

"This is something that the public needs to know. And a lot of people don't even look at their guidebook until they have their ballot or the night before they're going to vote," Baker emphasized.

She recounted opening her voter guide on September 21st and reading through the first 50 or so pages. Up to that point, nothing seemed wrong. But as she was reading information on Proposition 40, she noticed something odd.

"I was reading about proposition 40, and I was reading the argument in favor," she explained, flipping through the pages. "And then the argument against is not there."

News Channel 3 also reached out to the California Secretary of State's office for clarification on the error. In its response, it explained an error was made during the printing and assembly process by a contracted printer.

Their response continued:

"We are so far aware of two voters who reported missing pages in their guides. These voters were immediately mailed replacement guides. Out of an abundance of caution, we are also mailing a small number of guides to the addresses located in the immediate area of the residences where misprints have been identified.

If anyone identifies an error with their [Voter Information Guide (VIG)], we recommend they notify their county election official or the California Secretary of State so that they can receive a replacement as soon as possible.

Additionally, a digital version of the Voter Information Guide is available on our website: https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/"

CA Secretary of State Press Team

The Secretary of State's office said the two voters with errors in their guides were both from the Palm Springs area. Since the printers the Secretary of State partners with to produce the guides are often regional, these errors could still be in circulation in the Coachella Valley. Baker said some of the neighbors she checked with also found missing or duplicate pages.

She had some advice, from one valley voter to another: "Be sure to research things and check your voter guide. And if yours is missing pages, especially on the propositions and on the candidate statements, those are really important."