Rock County Board candidate Jacob Taylor didn’t drop out of the race for the District 16 seat, but his name wasn’t on the absentee ballots sent out to roughly 200 residents in the City of Beloit.
Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson said Taylor’s name was inadvertently left off of the ballot due to a proofing error.
The ballots are being reprinted and re-sent to everyone in City of Beloit wards 5, 6 and 7 that already requested absentee ballots.
The voters who already submitted absentee ballots are being asked to resubmit the corrected ballot, but if they don’t send in the second ballot, their first ballot without Taylor’s name on it will be accepted.
“I wonder how many of those people just thought maybe I dropped out and voted for the incumbent, and how many of them will get the chance to recast their votes,” Taylor said. “But I’m not certain there’s anything the county clerk could have done other than not this mistake in the first place.”
Tollfeson said the election programming system is completely separate from the rest of the county’s servers to help keep the election secure, so the 94 races and 325-plus candidates on Rock County ballots have to be entered by hand.
Tollefson said her office has at least four people proofread the ballots, and they all missed the mistake.
Taylor wouldn’t have known about it either, if not for a voter who noticed the omission on his ballot and reached out to see if he was still running.
He said he was disappointed that this happened, but he understands it was an honest mistake by a busy clerk’s office.
“I think they’re doing the best they can given the situation,” Taylor said. “I’m not really sure how else you could do it.”
Taylor is running against incumbent Phillip Owens, who was first appointed to the county board in the fall of 2015 to replace Jason Dowd.
