The Grind:
On Friday, Franklin County, Ohio’s most populous county, announced that 49,669 voters got an incorrect absentee ballot in the mail this week.
The Franklin County Board of Elections stated:
The board has already begun the process to print, stuff, and mail the 49,669 replacement ballots and expect them to be sent to the United States Postal Service within 72 hours for delivery. Additionally, while the replacement ballots are processed, the board will mail informational postcards to all impacted voters that detail the situation and highlight the voter’s multiple voting options moving forward.
The Details:
“We want to make it clear that every voter who received an inaccurate ballot will receive a corrected ballot,” the board continued. “Stringent tracking measures are in place to guarantee that a voter can only cast one vote.”
“Ohio is one of a number of states that mails absentee ballot applications to all voters, but unlike other states, it has done so since 2012. … Around 1.9 million Ohioans requested an absentee ballot in the state’s April primary, prompting an outcry when some were delayed in arriving. That forced some voters to cast their votes in person despite health concerns,” Fox News reported.
“Election officials blame a malfunction with one of the high-speed scanners used to process the ballots,” WOSU stated. WOSU noted that election board director Ed Leonard explained, “On October 3 at 2:24 p.m., a function of one of those scanners was disabled. This was determined to be the root cause of the system error that led to voters receiving an incorrect ballot.” Read more…