Election Board Officials Say Nearly 50,000 Incorrect Absentee Ballots Sent Out in Franklin County, Ohio

The Ohio Board of Elections say that 49,669 voters received the wrong absentee ballot. A total of 237,498 ballots were sent out making just more than 20% of the ballots given to the wrong people. The board says they are quickly reprinting and remailing new ballots and that voters should have them within 72 hours.

In a press release the board said, “We want to make it clear that every voter who received an inaccurate ballot will receive a corrected ballot.”

It is still unknown who is responsible for this massive problem. The mistake happened when this unknown person changed a setting on the device that fills mailing envelopes with absentee ballots. The error is believed to be inadvertent, but time and investigation will tell.

The board says this process is taking longer than they would like, but they are working with their software vendor, BlueCrest. They want to identify each voter that’s been impacted and determine the full scope of the issue.

Affected voters can either wait for their new ballot or vote in person. Officials are using these three safeguards to ensure accuracy of voting 1) Redundancies are built into our system to ensure every voter is allotted only one voted ballot, 2) Sorting systems will drop out and not accept any replacement ballots that are submitted if a voter has already voted in person, and 3) Nightly runs are issued to check all incoming ballots against earlier submissions or a vote cast in person.

The board of elections said in a news release, “The Franklin County Board of Elections would like to thank the voters of Franklin County for their patience as we strive to fulfill our goal to administer safe, fair, impartial and accurate elections.”

It’s interesting though, Democrats keep saying there is no threat of voter fraud, and yet in the past few months Americans have seen several instances of mail in voting problems with their ballots. At this point, it’s hard to think that voter fraud isn’t a risk this election.

Sources: Fox 8, The Columbus Dispatch; Photo-WOSU Radio