Secretary of State says two 'human errors' affected 2026 petitioning; office details fixes

The Secretary of State told the Government Oversight Committee on Sept. 11 that two human errors in her office contributed to problems during the 2026 primary petitioning process and that staff have corrected the documents and strengthened review procedures. "I am happy to be here to talk about how two human errors occurred in our office," she said, and added that the mistakes happened against a backdrop of heavy, year‑round workload as the office implemented major election changes.

Director of Elections Kristen Sullivan explained that the office consolidated two petition pages (ED619 and ED619A) into one during an effort to reduce confusion; during that revision the language was inadvertently changed to instruct circulators to list the total number of signatures across all petition pages rather than the number of signatures on each page as required by law. Sullivan said the petition form has been corrected and the calendar was revised to explicitly distinguish single‑town state legislative offices from other municipal offices to avoid ambiguity. "We accept responsibility for not presenting that information as clearly as it could have been presented," Sullivan told the committee.