Debbie Durk of Granite Bay is accustomed to getting a lot of campaign calls at election time.
But the one that came Saturday was a doozy.
The caller asked Durk to verify that her husband, Mark Durk, had received his absentee ballot.
Trouble is, Mark Durk, 54, doesn't vote absentee, Debbie Durk said.
"It's too late to send it in now anyway," she quoted the caller's response.
The Durks believe the telephone discussion that followed was intended to discourage them from going to the polls Tuesday.
"It's going to be a big hassle," Debbie Durk recalled the caller saying. "He (Mark) will have to go through multiple lines," wait for hours to verify that he can vote, and wait perhaps weeks before the vote is counted.
The caller didn't leave her phone number.
On Sunday, Mark Durk called Ryan Ronco in the Placer County registrar's office. It turns out Durk's experience is not unique.
Ronco, assistant registrar of voters for Placer County, told The Bee calls that generate alarm or confusion are a feature of some major elections.
This year, as many as a dozen people have called his office who either had not signed up for vote-by-mail and were told that their ballots would not get to them, or they had their absentee ballots already in hand.
Ronco said Mark Durk should have no difficulty casting his ballot Tuesday.
Absentee voters who have not voted also can show up at polling places on Election Day and cast a provisional ballot after spending a few minutes on paperwork, Ronco said.
A provisional ballot takes longer to process because elections officials must ensure that an absentee ballot isn't also being counted.
Mark Durk said Sunday that the call his wife received appeared to been part of a political agenda "to discourage people from opposing parties to vote."
"They flat out said they (the registrar's office) will not count my vote until weeks after the election, insinuating there is no real need for me to vote," Durk said.
He said he planned to ask for police and phone company help today to trace the source of the caller.
"There are men and women historically who have died for us to get the right to vote," he said. "For someone to discourage me from voting, I take that very personally."
Call The Bee's Loretta Kalb, (916) 478-2641.
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