Nearly 50,000 incorrect absentee ballots have been mailed to people in the county surrounding the Ohio state capital of Columbus, election officials announced Friday.
The issue involves about 49,669 absentee ballots, about one in every five, mailed to voters in Franklin County, a region that has voted reliably Democratic in elections since the mid 1990s.
Voters who received the incorrect ballots will get a new one in the mail.
“No vote will be counted twice. Every voter will receive an accurate ballot and that ballot will be counted," county Elections Director Ed Leonard told reporters, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
If a voter returns both the replacement and the incorrect original, only the replacement will be considered valid. If only the original ballot is ballot is returned, votes in only the races that the resident is eligible to cast a ballot will be counted.
Officials said a person accidentally changed software settings in a machine that places the ballots into envelopes, Fox News reports.
President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly warned of the potential for voter fraud and other problems with attempts to expand absentee voting – particularly universal mail-in balloting in which every voter is mailed a ballot whether or not it was requested, pounced on the report.
“Breaking News: 50,000 OHIO VOTERS getting WRONG ABSENTEE BALLOTS. Out of control. A Rigged Election!!!” Trump posted to his Twitter account.
Franklin County is Ohio’s most populous county, according to 2019 U.S. Census estimates, with more than 1.3 million people. It is represented by three different members of Congress, two Republicans and a Democrat.
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