Early voting glitches in 2 counties in Ga., Tenn.
USA Today. 24 October 2008 Associated Press

ATLANTA, Ga. (AP) — Elections officials were untangling early voting glitches in at least two states Friday after a Tennessee county reported some voters had gotten ballots for the wrong district and an Atlanta-area county discovered problems with some of its absentee ballots.

In Georgia, Gwinnett County Elections Superintendent Lynn Ledford told the Gwinnett Daily Post that ovals where voters mark their choices are too thick for optical scanning machines to read. She said officials discovered the problem after a routine test last week.

The county has reprinted 19,000 ballots to fix the problem and is mailing the corrected ones for new requests.

At least 10,000 absentee ballots that have been returned will have to be hand-counted, Ledford said. Members of each political party will monitor the vote transfer and the county will keep copies of both the old and new ballots.

Ledford said the problem will not interfere with votes being counted in the Nov. 4 election.

In neighboring Tennessee, multiple voters in one northeastern county were given ballots for the wrong state House district during early voting.

Sullivan County Administrator of Elections Gena Frye told the Kingsport Times-News that three or four voters caught the mistakes and were given the correct ballots before casting their votes.

But Frye said two other voters called to complain after casting the wrong ballots. She said the problems were first identified on Tuesday.