Image via the Office of CM Grosso.

“Our records show that you are NOT registered to vote,” reads a flyer sent out to 74,000 citizens by the D.C. Board of Elections on September 16, entreating people to register. The only problem? About 5,700 of the fliers went to people who were registered.

It turns out the problem was related to when those folks registered—decades ago. DCBOEE spokesperson Tamara Robinson says that, prior to 1975, people who registered to vote did not list a date of birth, so they received a “default birthday.”

The flyers are part of a partnership between DCBOEE and a multi-state partnership called the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC. ERIC uses data-matching between the Department of Motor Vehicles and DCBOEE to find eligible voters who haven’t yet registered, and, in the process, roped in these voters with default birthdays.

The attempt to square away the voter file comes after a June report from the Auditor’s Office examined the voter rolls and suggested more regular use of ERIC.

After multiple constituents contacted At-Large Councilmember David Grosso about the flyers, he sent DCBOEE a letter expressing his concern. It characterizes the agency’s effort to get these voters to provide their accurate birthdays as “a failure.”

But in a release, DCBOEE maintains that the flyer’s purpose was about registering voters, rather than updating dates of birth. To that end, the Board of Elections says that it has seen a “pronounced spike” in voter registration applications since the flyers were mailed, though it’s unclear if that’s directly tied to the flyers or just what happens as the general election draws closer.

The agency says it will send out a clarifying notification and “certainly regret[s] any inconvenience this has caused any currently registered voter,” though it adds that the flyer has text addressing people who may have erroneously received it, “anticipating that some individuals would receive the postcard in error.” None of the people who received the flyer were taken off the rolls, the agency says.

This is not the first time that DCBOEE has inconvenienced voters. A bug in the app the agency rolled out before the June primary switched some voters’ party affiliations, compelling them to use a provisional ballot. An audit of the 2014 general election found that one in four polling places was not staffed properly, among other accessibility issues.

Currently, the agency does not have a compliance officer on staff, ever since Margarita Mikhaylova left the agency for D.C. Police at the beginning of September.

General counsel Ken McGhie says that the agency currently has winnowed the pool of applicants down to three candidates and will conduct final interviews next week.

But is McGhie concerned that the job is currently unfilled so close to election time? He says Mikhaylova was in charge of compliance with the Help America Vote Act, which made reforms to the procedures regarding registration databases, equipment, provisional voting, and more.

“We don’t have anything going on with HAVA right now so there’s no need for an immediate compliance person,” McGhie says.

DCBOEE had an even bigger opening for much of this year—executive director—before filling the position with Alice Miller, who previously held the role from 1992 to 2008.

The deadline to register online for this election is October 11, and D.C. also has same day voter registration. A bill that will go before the full council on October 11 would automatically register voters when they obtain IDs at the DMV.

This post has been updated.