Absentee ballots corrected
Summit County should mail reprinted pages Monday after printer fixes mistakes
By Lisa A. Abraham, Beacon Journal staff writer
October 21, 2006

Newly printed absentee ballots are expected to arrive at the Summit County Board of Elections this morning, after a printing error caused a number of mistakes on the second page of the ballot.

``We should be mailing them by Monday if we get them (Saturday),'' said Marijean Donofrio, deputy director of the board.

The board has close to 23,000 requests from voters who want an absentee ballot for the Nov. 7 election mailed to them, and has been waiting on ballots to arrive to begin sending them out.

When absentees ballots arrived at the board Thursday, the second page of the ballots contained numerous mistakes and typographical errors, making it unreadable.

The ballots were printed by Miami Printing of Cincinnati, one of two Ohio printing companies certified by Election Systems & Software to print optical-scan ballots for use in ES&S voting machines.

One solution being considered was to use the regular ballots that had been printed for use at the polls. But when they were inspected by the printer, they were found to have the same mistakes as the absentee ballots, Donofrio said.

By Friday afternoon, Miami Printing had discovered the computer problem that caused the error and was reprinting the absentee ballots, she said.

``They said we'd have a shipment here early Saturday, and then another late Saturday or Sunday,'' Donofrio said.

Although the board is not open to the public today, she said staff would be working to inspect the ballots when they arrive and start the process of filling absentee ballot requests.

The ballot error has not stopped absentee voting from taking place at the board's Grant Street office.

Citizens who walk in to the board to vote have been given ballots printed on equipment at the board. However, the board's printer is not capable of printing the large number of absentees needed to fill the mailed ballot requests.