California SOS Admits Primary Ballot Will Go Out With Wrong Designation For Senate Candidate Pascucci

The California Secretary of State’s Office announced over the weekend that TV anchorwoman and 2024 U.S. Senate candidate Christina Pascucci will have the wrong ballot designation in the Primary election ballot, listing her as “No Ballot Designation” rather than “Local Television Journalist.”

Over the last few months, the 2024 California U.S. Senate primary election has become one of the closest fights for second place in recent memory. While Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has pulled out to a large lead, former baseball star Steve Garvey (R), Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-CA), and to a lesser extent, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) have scrapped for a second place finish. According to the latest poll, Garvey is currently 5 points ahead of third place Porter. However, several other candidates routinely still receive between 2-3% of the vote, making their presence in the race a big factor of if either Garvey or Porter wins. This includes lawyer Eric Early (R), businessman James Bradley (R), and Pascucci (D). Should one of them falter even further at the polls, it would mean a bump in support going to one of the top four candidates.

“Garvey benefits most here,” Stephanie Lewis, a pollster in Southern California, told the Globe on Monday. “If Early or Bradley go down a percentage point, or just drop out, their supporters are Republican and will go towards Garvey in all likelihood. Democrats are running out of places to scrape votes from, so Pascucci, the largest of the under 5% Democrats left in the race, is being eyed by them. Should Pascucci lose a bit more than the polls project in the primary, that means votes going to the top three Democrats most likely. And for Porter, who is so close to Garvey, that little bit can be huge. So if, say, a ballot printing mistake occurs, then yeah, it can have an effect.”

Last week, an error in the 2024 Primary Ballot, which has already been printed out and sent to voters across California, made a mistake regarding Pascucci. Due to an administrative error, Pascucci’s designation on the ballot will be “No Ballot Designation” rather than the correct “Local Television Journalist.” While the information will be updated on the Secretary of State’s website, all ballots and voter information guides will not have such changes, as they have already been printed and sent.

“The California Secretary of State’s office is issuing the following notice of a corrected ballot designation for the March 5, 2024, Presidential Primary Election,” said the California Secretary of State’s office during the weekend. “Updated information will be listed on the Secretary of State’s website but will not appear on ballots or voter information guides.

“The ballot designation of Christina Pascucci, candidate for United States Senator (both Full Term and Partial/Unexpired Term) is ‘Local Television Journalist.’ Due to an administrative error, her designation was listed on the Certified List of Candidates as “No Ballot Designation.'”

In a statement, Pascucci thanked the office for acknowledging the change but went after them for not catching the change before the ballots were printed.

“Free and fair elections are a pillar of democracy. Given the importance of the integrity of the electoral process, I greatly appreciate the Secretary taking the unprecedented step of re-releasing the certified list, but it’s unfortunate this mistake happened and then couldn’t be fixed before counties printed ballots,” added Pascucci. “While it’s difficult to quantify the impact that may have, I remain hopeful. Our message is resonating throughout the state because we’re speaking to the issues California families are most concerned about: rising crime, immigration, homelessness, and the skyrocketing cost of living.”

A wrong designation on the primary ballot

A representative for Pascucci’s campaign also noted on Monday, “Having worked in California media for 20+ years, I do NOT ever remember this happening to a candidate, let alone the SOS admitting their mistake.”

“This SOS error is not a trivial matter, as it reflects poorly on Christina’s professionalism and readiness. It also influences how voters will perceive her campaign and her qualifications for the office. The Secretary of State has acknowledged this error and attempted to fix it, but it may be too late to undo the damage. This is an unprecedented situation.”

While the SOS has not made another statement on the matter as of Monday early afternoon, experts told the Globe that this will have an effect.

“There will be people who look down the list of candidates one last time,” continued Lewis. “They’ll see people with ‘U.S. Representative’ or ‘Baseball representative’ or ‘Businessman’ next to their names. Then they’ll see Pascucci, and they may assume she doesn’t have a job despite being a well-seasoned journalist. That will definitely change minds. And you know if it happened to one of the big three Democrats or Garvey, their respective parties would raise hell and probably get them fixed despite that deadline. There have been ballot mistakes in other states where they left off a candidate, forgot to include a race, something like that.”

“Problem is, it costs the taxpayers a lot. One county in Nevada last year paid $178,000 to reprint ballots. And that was at a county level for sample ballots. This is for the statewide Senate race in California. We’re talking millions.”

“They did correct the mistake online, but for the people getting these ballots in the mail or voting in-person, you know, this factor that is supposed to be fair isn’t. If Porter beats Garvey by a narrow percentage, you can bet a lot of people will be pointing to this and demanding fairness. I hope the SOS office knows exactly what the possibilities are here, because they just made Pascucci supporters angry and could have it extended way more because of the effects.”