Name: Franklin County sends some absentee ballots to wrong voters; elections officials cite software error
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Franklin County sends some absentee ballots to wrong voters; elections officials cite software error

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NEW!257sharesCOLUMBUS, Ohio -- Voters in Ohio’s most populous county have reported getting the wrong ballots mailed to them in what local elections officials are attributing to a software error.Elections officials in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, said they are working with a third-party vendor to determine how many voters the issue affected. But Aaron Sellers, a Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman, said the problem had to do with a high-speed scanner that’s used to monitor accuracy not working properly. Franklin County Elections Director Ed Leonard told the Columbus Dispatch the problem also involved a setting in some of the board’s software being disabled.“They got a ballot that was intended for someone else. All our data is correct. The ballot would have been produced correctly, it just got inserted into the wrong envelope. The system checks that would have prevented that were disabled,” Leonard said.Voters who think they got the wrong ballot can head to their county elections office to cast an early ballot in person. But Leonard told the Dispatch they’re still figuring out how they will let voters know who was affected, including letting them know about their options. Mail ballots were required to be ready on Tuesday, which some counties interpreted meant they could mail them on Monday, while Cuyahoga County, for instance, waited until Tuesday. Franklin County is expected to be a Democratic voting stronghold in the November presidential election. Nearly 246,000 voters there have requested absentee ballots, second in the state only to Cuyahoga County, where voters have requested 299,000 ballots. More than 2 million people have requested them around Ohio.In a statement, Maggie Sheehan, a spokeswoman for Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, said the state immediately notified Franklin County elections officials when they became aware of the problem, and “began work to mitigate the issue with impacted voters.”“System checks are in place to make sure mistakes like the one made by the Franklin County Board of Elections don’t happen -- but they only work if the board properly executes those checks,” she said.Noah Blundo, a reporter for Hannah News Service, said he was among the Franklin County voters affected by the issue. He said he received a ballot that listed the wrong candidates, while his wife got the correct one.Well, I am among the Franklin County voters who got the wrong absentee ballots. I'm in House District 25 but my ballot lists HD19 candidates. My wife got the correct ballot.— Noah Blundo (@nblundo)Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.

NEW!257sharesCOLUMBUS, Ohio -- Voters in Ohio’s most populous county have reported getting the wrong ballots mailed to them in what local elections officials are attributing to a software error.Elections officials in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, said they are working with a third-party vendor to determine how many voters the issue affected. But Aaron Sellers, a Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman, said the problem had to do with a high-speed scanner that’s used to monitor accuracy not working properly. Franklin County Elections Director Ed Leonard told the Columbus...

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Franklin County sends some absentee ballots to wrong voters; elections officials cite software error

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