COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose issued a directive Wednesday night to guide the Franklin County Board of Elections in fixing their mistake of mailing incorrect ballots to voters.
The directive asks the county to create a process that would allow voters to report they have received an incorrect ballot. It also says the county must quickly replace them with the ballots voters requested.
It’s unknown how many people received a wrong ballot, but it’s among 250,000 that were mailed out in the first round this week.
LaRose told the Franklin County Board of Elections that if a voter received an incorrect ballot, votes with it and returns that ballot, the board shouldn’t process it prior to the start of the official canvass. Replacement ballots that are returned in a timely manner will be counted.
The report of mailing incorrect ballots comes after Ohio announced more than 2.1 million residents have requested an absentee ballot for this election—a record for the state. The number is more than double of the amount requested in 2016.
As for how the error happened, the Ohio Secretary of State Communications Team released this statement: “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.”
If you have any questions about the election, check out our voting guide here.
