Blunder Sends Wrong Ballots To Nearly 50,000 Ohio Voters

About 20% of absentee voters in Columbus received the wrong ballots.

Franklin County election officials said Friday (October 9) that the correct ballots would be mailed within 72 hours to the nearly 50,000 citizens.

There are nearly 240,000 residents voting by mail this election. Franklin County is home to about 880,000 voters. Those who received incorrect ballots represent nearly 6% of registered voters. Officials said the error happened because of a setting change on a machine on Saturday (October 3), the Associated Press reported.

The Franklin County Board of Elections confirmed that the process to replace the ballots and mail them to voters had already begun Friday. It also announced that it would explain the error to affected voters and ensure they know how to cast a vote, including in person, according to the Associated Press.

“We want to make it clear that every voter who received an inaccurate ballot will receive a corrected ballot," the Franklin County Board of Elections said in a press release Friday. "Stringent tracking measures are in place to guarantee that a voter can only cast one vote.”

President Donald Trump pointed to the board’s error as evidence of a “rigged election,” but the board assured that — though it was a “serious mistake” — its members are “bipartisan…and every vote will be counted.”

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