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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and happy October 1st, one month and two days until what we used to call Election Day. Of course, voting is already underway in so many places, including around here. We will begin today with the absentee ballot problems in Brooklyn that our reporter Brigid Bergin discovered and what you should do about it to make sure your vote counts if you're one of the nearly 100,000 people who might be affected.

We'll also get into how President Trump is already twisting this to suggest there will be fraud in the election results and how the President's rhetoric has created a difference in how to handle the problem in Brooklyn, between Governor Cuomo and the New York City board of elections. Brigid Bergin is the New York City politics and policy reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Hi, Brigid, thanks for coming on.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning, Brian.

Brian: This can be a confusing story. Let's start at the beginning. This is about the return envelopes that people are supposed to send back their absentee ballots in. Whose return envelopes had what kinds of problems?

Brigid: We started to hear from voters in Brooklyn primarily, only on Monday, that they were very excited. They had received their absentee ballots in the mail. They opened up the package. As they were preparing to put the completed ballot back into the return envelope, they noticed that the name and address on that return envelope was not theirs. We heard this repeatedly. When I began to dig into it, the Board of Elections confirmed that, yes, in fact, they had also been notified of this issue.

They had learned about it on Saturday, and had been talking with the print company who was responsible for printing and mailing these ballots, a company out of Rochester, New York called Phoenix Graphics and that the company had in fact confirmed, yes, there was a printer error. At that point on Monday, they still did not have a sense of how widespread the problem was, and it took until Tuesday to get the number which, as you said, was close to 100,000 voters who could have been potentially impacted, because they were all part of this initial print run that Phoenix Graphics did on September 17th for the first batch of absentee ballots that went out on September 18th.

Brian: Is this only a problem in Brooklyn?

Brigid: There's a small number of ballots that were also affected in Nassau County. The number is about 800. In terms of the five boroughs, at this point, it appears that it was only isolated to Brooklyn.

Brian: Is it mostly in certain parts of Brooklyn?

Brigid: It seems pretty widespread in Brooklyn. We have a lot of neighborhoods that were impacted. I think it has more to do with when people applied for their absentee ballots. These are generally people who applied very early as soon as the absentee ballot portal was made available online, which was in late August. It seems that it's really more has to do with the timing than the geography at this point. They're going to address this problem for any of the potentially impacted voters.

Brian: Listeners, help us report this story. Did this happen to you? Are you one of the people who received somebody else's absentee ballot return envelope? What did you do, or what are you going to do, or what questions do you have for WNYC's Brigid Bergin, who reported the story? 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280, or you can tweet a question or comment @BrianLehrer. To be very clear, Brigid, what should people check for to make sure their absentee ballot envelopes are accurate?

Brigid: When you get your absentee ballot package that return envelope, which was the source of a lot of confusion for some voters in the June primary, it's been redesigned in some ways to make things easier, but in this particular case, on the front of the envelope, running along the left side, there is a name and address and then there's a barcode. You want to look and make sure that that name and address is yours. For most voters across the city, knock on wood, unless there's something that we haven't discovered yet that should be accurate.

However, if you are in Brooklyn and are part of this batch of voters that have this erroneous absentee ballot return envelope, at this point, what the city Board of Elections plans to do is to mail you a second absentee ballot package with a notice explaining why you're getting it and asking you to destroy the first package and to use this second vote. Second ballot, excuse me.

Brian: What happens if someone had already cast a vote and returned the envelope that had someone else's name, maybe without realizing it?

Brigid: These envelopes have a barcode on them and a voter ID, and the Board can track this information. When you fill out your absentee ballot, you also have to sign the back of it. What will happen in most cases, if you didn't notice, that this wasn't your envelope, obviously, the signature on the back of this envelope will not match the name on the front of the envelope, so it would be voided. This is why this issue was so important for us to report for people to know, because if the ballot had been voided, then people would have been disenfranchised.

In this case, since the Board is aware of this issue, since they know who they are mailing these ballots out to, that ballot will not count. You don't have to worry about it if you already mailed it in, because it would have been voided anyhow, because the signature and the name didn't match.

Brian: Why are our names on the return envelopes, to begin with, if we're supposed to have a practice of secret ballots in this country to protect our privacy?

Brigid: Because these are absentee ballots. Right, Brian? It's part of the security and part of the tracking. When the ballot is mailed in, this is a way for the Board of Elections to know that you applied for this absentee ballot. You received it, you mailed it back, and then they can say, "Okay, Brigid Bergin has mailed back her absentee ballot." Before they begin counting them, they go through this process of just evaluating the envelopes. As listeners might remember from the June primary, that's where we had-- There was a lot of questions around issues of postmarks, because this absentee ballot oath envelope that goes into the envelope that you actually mail.

They will look at these envelopes and make sure things like the signature is there that you have dated it, and then assuming that they decide that the envelope is valid, and they have confirmed that you didn't vote in person during early voting or on Election Day, then they take the ballots out and they scan them. There's no way to know that your ballot connects with your envelope, it is still a secret ballot. The name is there. It's for tracking purposes.

Brian: Before we get into the dispute between Governor Cuomo and the New York City Board of Elections about how to rectify this problem and what President Trump has to do with that, I want you to help reassure people who might think that they have another absentee ballot printing problem, and may be confused. You and I had an exchange about this by email last night, as I think we were both watching the Yankees playoff game.

By the way, I was walking down the street on Monday, and there were three like 10 year old boys coming in the other direction. As I passed them, I heard one of them say to the group, "I'm watching the Yankee playoff game Tuesday night, not some Democratic-Republican debate." I think those kids had the right idea, actually, as it turns out. A friend of mine showed me their absentee ballot. This friend has never been in the military, and certainly is not now, and the absentee ballot, as apparently a lot of them do, or you tell me, maybe all of them do, the absentee ballot said, "Military absentee ballot."

I emailed you last night to say, "Uh-oh, civilians are getting military absentee ballots. Is this going to cause another whole horror show?" The answer is?

Brigid: The answer is no. It is causing a lot of confusion. Absolutely. I'm actually holding my absentee ballot right now, looking at it, and it says, "Official absentee military ballot for the general election, November 3rd, 2020." Now, what it was supposed to say was "Official absentee/military ballot for the general election November 3rd, 2020." That slash was not there- is not there, and that has led to a lot of confusion from people like your neighbor and many others saying, "Wait, why do I have a military ballot? I'm not in the military. I've never been in the military." It is unfortunate because it's confusing, but it doesn't matter. The ballots are fine. The ballots will count.

The bigger issue is this issue with the envelope, because this is how the Board of Elections can tell if you have submitted your absentee ballot. People don't need to worry about that language on the ballot. They do need to make sure that the absentee ballot oath envelope has the correct name, address on it.

Brian: Lisa in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Brigid Bergin. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi. Is that me?

Brian: That's you.

Lisa: Oh, great. I've only been trying to call you since I went into self-isolation in February.

[laughter]

Brian: I'm glad you got through.

Lisa: This is the first time I've made it on. I just wanted to say that, while I was getting information from friends, from various civic organizations letting me know about this problem for several days now, I heard nothing directly from the Board of Elections and decided I wanted to get my information from the official source. As of yesterday, there was nothing on the main website. There was nothing on the website where you apply for an absentee ballot or where you track your own absentee ballot.

Calling the New York City number for the Board of Elections, the automated phone system told me there were 77 people ahead of me. When I tried to call the number for the Brooklyn branch of the Board of Elections, no one even picked up the phone. When you have, at that point, reports going out of at least 100,000 ballots with this problem and a dispute about whether or not they were automatically going to send out replacement ballots to people, it does not inspire any confidence that the one thing the Board of Elections has not done is, give that information out from their own forces by changing the recording on their phones and putting it on their website. This was as of 4:30 in the afternoon yesterday.

Brian: Brigid.

Brigid: Yes, Lisa, I will not disagree with you. I think that those are very fair concerns. I can say that in the course of reporting the story I also had tried to call the voter hotline, the 1866 vote NYC number, and I was told I had 79 callers ahead of me. I deeply sympathize with that experience. Part of the problem was that, I think, the Board was trying to understand the scope of what they were dealing with and then trying to decide what was going to be the best solution for voters to ensure that no one was disenfranchised, to ensure that no one lost their vote.

As we reported yesterday, there was definitely some debate over what was going to be the better solution. I think part of the reason there was not some initial upfront communication was because they were struggling to figure out the best way to address what was, clearly and indisputably, a big problem.

Lisa: The simple solution, to start with, to be open and transparent, as people are fond of saying now, is to say something that may be less than helpful, let's say, the cable company does, and just put a notice the equivalent of "There's an outage in your area," to say, "Yes, there is an issue. Yes, we know. We are working on it. The information will be on the website and on our phone message, and we will be contacting people shortly, so that you don't have, at any given time, close to 100 people on your phone, all trying to get the same non-answer.

Brigid: Absolutely.

Brian: I'm glad you finally got through here to get on the air. Keep calling us. I guess Lisa's story leads us into the dispute between Governor Cuomo and the New York City Board of Elections over whether to correct the problem by sending out new ballots to all the affected people, or only new returned envelopes. What are the two sides here?

Brigid: Yes, I think there are the two solutions and then, again, to the point that Lisa raised, there's this idea of how and when this information is communicated to the public, and what do you do once that has happened. The governor's office made a recommendation that, instead of sending out entire new absentee ballot packages, so a new ballot, a ballot return envelope, the envelope that you mail it back to the city with, that the Board simply mail out new absentee ballot oath envelopes, the envelope that you put your ballot in that had the erroneous information printed on it.

Their logic was that to send the entire new package was an overcorrection, that putting additional ballots out there was unnecessary because, to the extent that they were aware, the ballots were not the problem. It was the envelope that was the problem.

On the other side of that, what was unclear to the Board, what advocates said, elected officials in Brooklyn, particularly where there are some close races were warning, it's not clear that the problem was only the information printed on the envelope, that there could have been ballots that were also wrong. Because if you got the envelope of someone who was in a different assembly district, then you could, in fact, have received the incorrect ballot as well.

There was a debate over what the Board should do. The governor does not technically control the city Board of Elections. However, as we have seen throughout the pandemic, the governor has the power of his executive orders, so he could have directed the agency to do something. Instead, he had his office made a recommendation. What became that another complicating factor was that the recommendation came after the city Board had communicated publicly their proposed solution, which was to send voters these new absentee ballot packages.

The executive director, Michael Ryan, announced publicly at their weekly commissioners meeting on Tuesday afternoon, with hundreds of people watching the live stream, and reporters like me who were watching it and then reporting on it, that their decision was to address this problem by sending out brand new absentee ballot packages. It was after that that this discussion about this alternative came up. Regardless of which is the better solution, the other complicating factor was that they had already communicated what they were going to do. It was going to involve not just changing the solution, but walking back what they had already communicated.

Brian: Beyond that, Governor Cuomo was worried that if they send out 100,000 second rounds of ballots, or second round of 100,000 duplicate ballots, that President Trump is going to use this for disinformation, right?

Brigid: Absolutely. Unfortunately, I think that is a very legitimate concern. We've already seen the president tweet about this repeatedly. The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg has a just outstanding piece of journalism and investigation into how the myth of voter fraud has been perpetuated. One of the things, it's really important for people to understand that this is not a case where voter fraud would have been the likely outcome or could have even happened, because you cannot submit your absentee ballot without this envelope. Right now, what's happening is that people would have been having their ballots voided.

This is a story about voter disenfranchisement, not about voter fraud. As Jim wrote in this really wonderful story, voter fraud is an adaptable fiction, and so the president has seized on the story, unfortunately, and has been talking about it in the context of voter fraud, which I just want to reiterate again, it is not what the story is about. This is a story about voter disenfranchisement.

Brian: To be clear about what you just said, just to reiterate it and paraphrase it and say it again, if somebody tries to vote twice, because they've been sent these two ballots, one of the envelopes that they've been sent to mail the ballots back in, is going to be wrong for them and the system is set up so that that's going to get caught, right?

Brigid: Absolutely. You cannot vote twice. If you try to submit two absentee ballots through this process, one of those absentee ballots will have the wrong name on it, it will not count, it will be voided. The only way to submit your absentee ballot and have it count in New York is to have your name, match the name that is printed on that and for your signature to match the signature that's on file for that name. Even in some dark scenario where someone imagined somehow this envelope getting in the wrong hands, you would have to also know the person's signature.

It is not possible for this to be the source of voter fraud, it is very possible if this was not fixed for it to be the source of voter disenfranchisement. One other point, though, that is very important to make, Brian, is that here in New York, we also have early voting and voting on election day. Even if you apply for an absentee ballot, if you are concerned that for any of the various reasons, legitimate or not, that have been raised around the post office, what have you, you can still choose to go and vote in person. Even if you mailed your absentee ballot, it will not be counted because they will know that you voted in person. It is your right if you choose to vote in person to do that.

Brian: We have a number of different callers with a number of different aspects of this problem and a few that we haven't actually mentioned yet. Let's see what's going on around the area. Meryl in Brooklyn you're on WNYC with WNYC's Brigid Bergin. Hi, Meryl.

Meryl: Hi, thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. I have you on speaker because I want to read you something that I found online.

Brian: Luckily, you have a very good speakerphone. Go ahead.

Meryl: Thank you so much. First of all, it's happening in Queens too. Second of all, the Board of Elections has a tweet that they made, that refers to something they say is an oath envelope. That language doesn't appear on their site, doesn't appear on the envelope. It's ridiculous that they're adding that confusing word in to refer people to the envelope.

I made a post that I put on my Instagram, I was in touch with my council persons office who's wonderful, and I work with a lot to try and clarify it. I have been saying very clearly that it's the envelope that you placed your absentee ballot into and signed, because there's an envelope that goes into that is actually the literal return envelope. I want to be clear about that also.

Finally, there is something that the Board of Elections has. That's nycabsentee.com/tracking that you can go to to check the status of your absentee ballot getting to you. I think you can also go to that to check if they accepted your absentee ballot. Since I'm not at that stage yet, I couldn't verify that, but I was wondering if Brigid knew that.

Brigid: I want to ask you a question first. Where in Queens are you in? Where are you seeing that this is also happening in Queens?

Meryl: I wish I knew. It's a good friend of mine's mom, and I'm sorry I don't have that information.

Brigid: I'd love to connect with you offline and just ensure that, is it Queens or is it Nassau, because we do know that it happened in parts of Nassau, which obviously could be right on the border of Queens. That would be a good thing to clarify.

Brian: You're walking down Northern Boulevard. You don't know if you're in Little Neck or Great Neck. Where is that line? Meryl, hang on after the call and we'll take your contact information if you're willing, so Brigid can see if this problem is more widespread than she realized. Go ahead, Brigid.

Brigid: Then to your other comment about the oath envelope, I think that, as we talk about elections, there's a lot of language that gets tossed about. I think there is a statement that you have to sign that's sometimes referred to as an oath on the back of the envelope. I think that is why they have referred to it as that to distinguish it from that, as you said, the envelope that you actually put in the mail, since this is the envelope that goes in the envelope. I hear you, as a reporter who covers this topic frequently, I'm always trying to make sure that the language is clear and simple, but it dabbles in legal ease. Thank you for the feedback and we'll keep that in mind.

In terms of the tracker, the tracker is a new function that the city Board created. If this was the election that I think they had hoped it would be, we would be talking about how wonderful it was that they had created this new absentee ballot tracker that does allow you to track when you apply, when it got mailed, if it got received. Yes, that is what the site is supposed to do.

At this point, it should be able to tell you all that information, it would be helpful to know from the Board, and I don't know the answer to this yet, if the tracker will make clear if you are getting this second ballot, but it is true that they have created this new function that allows voters to track that they have received their absentee ballot application that they have processed it, that they have mailed it and that they have received it. That is another tool that voters can refer to to check on the status of their absentee ballot.

Brian: We have a few minutes left with WNYC's Brigid Bergin who first reported the story that many people in Brooklyn have gotten absentee ballots with the wrong name on the return envelope for those ballots, and so the Board of Elections is sending out a new round of ballots to replace them. Be aware, people in Brooklyn and some in Nassau County. Also this is the extent of the problem as far as we know. Be aware, people in those locations. Make sure the name on the return envelope in which you send back your absentee ballot is your name. Brent in Bay Ridge you're in WNYC. Hi, Brent.

Brent: Hey. After I received my incorrect valid envelope, I just walked it over to my neighbor. He didn't live that far away, just a couple blocks, so I put all the information in a new envelope and I walked it over to my neighbor and gave it to him. Now, if the BOE does send out new envelopes, I have no ballot to put in it. They have to send out a full new packet because now I have nothing.

Brigid: Yes. That was one of the concerns. There was a narrow window of time between when we had reported that Cuomo administration officials had made this recommendation that the Board only send envelopes and when the Board decided to in fact go ahead and send their full absentee ballot packages. In that time, I started hearing immediately from voters with that exact concern that either they had transferred there ballot, they had tracked down their neighbor and given their neighbor the materials, or they had already gone ahead and destroyed the ballot that they had received because that was the advice they had received from the Board of Elections, because they actually were able to get through and speak to someone.

They were panicked that they were just going to get an envelope in the mail and they weren't going to be able to vote. Because of all of these different issues, that's part of the reason why the city Board of Elections decided to go ahead with their initial plan and mail out these brand new absentee ballot packages.

Brian: Adele in New Rochelle, you're on WNYC. Hi, Adele.

Adele: Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I have something of maybe a little unusual question. I have a nephew who is living and working abroad. He's in Colombia. He sent home a package with all sorts of stuff because he hasn't been home in a year. He included his absentee ballot. When we opened up the package, we saw his ballot, but it had been opened. It was opened at the top, it looked like somebody took a letter opener, opened up the envelope, and then scotch taped it back. Now, what do we do? What does he do?

Brigid: That's a good question. This has been an issue for absentee ballots in the past they could be invalidated if they had been sealed with anything other than the adhesive on the ballot itself. For example, if they'd been sealed with tape. If the ballot appears to be tampered with, it sounds like your nephew should absolutely reach out to the Board of Elections and alert them to that and get a new ballot. I think he should check in with the Board of Elections either way and just let them know what happened.

Brian: Last question, Brigid. I guess we, the taxpayers are footing the bill for this printing vendor that the Board of Elections hired to make the envelopes that messed up so badly here. Do we get our money back, like if a furniture store delivered somebody else's couch?

Brigid: If there's any silver lining, the vendor has admitted that this was their error and will in fact be paying for this, so taxpayers are not footing this bill. However, the vendor that made the mistake initially is also the vendor that will be fixing it, so we will be paying close attention to make sure that they fix it correctly. My friends over at the city, the new site, the city, have done some really important and interesting reporting about this vendor, how they got the contract, the fact that they appear to have a partisan vent, that they have donated more money to a local Republican county committees than Democratic county committees.

I will also say this is a vendor out of my hometown of Rochester, New York. There's a little bit of heartbreak for my hometown that this is all happening, but Greg Smith over at the city has done some really important reporting on this. I think we're going to continue to learn about these issues. Hopefully, they will solve this problem and we will all move on. I want to acknowledge the work of all of my colleagues because I think this is a big story and it's important for us all to be paying attention to it.

Brian: Just tell me they're not the absentee ballot vendor for Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Brigid: I sure hope not. [laughs]

Brian: WNYC’s Brigid Bergin. Thanks a lot.

Brigid: Thanks, Brian.

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