Candidate for governor angry about misspelled name

[dollardoctrinaire]

The Buzz: Candidate for governor angry about misspelled name

Gubernatorial candidate Mohammad Arif of the Peace and Freedom Party is hopping mad that his name is misspelled on the state's official voter information guide for the June 8 primary election.

"I'm very much upset, because I'm working hard on my election," Arif said Friday. "This is no joke, you know."

California's voter guide misspells Arif's first name by one letter – "Mohammed" instead of "Mohammad" – and voters who search the Internet under that name won't be directed to his campaign website, he said.

Arif, Kern County chairman of the Peace and Freedom Party, faces two gubernatorial opponents in the primary.

Shannan Velayas, spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, said the error has been corrected online but nothing can be done about the nearly 10 million paper guides that have already been distributed.

Velayas said neither Arif nor anyone else reported the error during the three-week period the voter guide was available for public review – Feb. 23 to March 15 – before it was printed. Arif's name will be spelled correctly on the ballot itself, she said.

Arif discovered the voter guide error Thursday.

"Of course it will hurt me," he said of the mistake's impact at the polls. "Definitely it will hurt me. … How could they overlook this?"

– Jim Sanders

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Edited May 15, 2010 by dollardoctrinaire

[Zip]

Whether the guys name is Mohammad or Murray it's not a mistake I would expect on an election ballot, and he is probably right, it will cost him.

[DavidOdden]

Yes, I can see how that can be confusing, since his major competition is Mohamed Salim of the Freedom and Peace Party, Mohammed Aziz of the Peace and Serenity Party, and Muhammad Farah of the Peace and Chill Out Party. It's pretty shocking that the California sec'y of state does not grasp the enormity of this mole-hill, not to mention the complete inability of Californians to identify this nutter's particular mis-spelling of the name Muḥammad, ptuh.