What I Know about Printers:

When you have something printed—think web and offset printing runs—there is always extra (Brochures, [ballots] etc.,) run before and after. This is called overage and it is usually sent to whom ever ordered the print run, as samples.

I think this may be how they got extra clean ballots. The overage can be a lot or a little. Do this on enough print runs and you can end up with thousands of extra ballots not included in the total amount of print collateral purchase order.

So if you order 1,000 brochures [ballots] The printer will print maybe 1,200 to allow for printing anomalies such as color adjustments, dot gain, ink smears, printer calibration, etc.

The questions that need to be answered—who did the election printing and what were the print runs?