First glitch in election lists wrong first name for candidate

The Associated Press - ATLANTA

The first glitch in Georgia's upcoming July 20 election has surfaced in Laurens County, where absentee ballots were printed with the wrong first name for a candidate in the nonpartisan Court of Appeals race.

Howard Mead, an Atlanta attorney who worked for former Govs. Zell Miller and Roy Barnes, was shown incorrectly as "Thomas Mead." Some 300 absentee votes already have been cast in the county using the incorrect ballot, the candidate said Wednesday.

Helen Harper, the county's probate judge and director of elections, blamed the error on the company which printed the ballots for the county and said it had promised to reprint them.

A spokesman for the Secretary of State's office, Chris Riggall, said the mistake has not been found on absentee ballots in any other county or on the touchscreen voting machines Georgians will use when they go to the polls to vote.

The absentee votes already cast in Laurens County in the judicial race would not need to be thrown out, Riggall said. "There have been instances where candidates' names have been misspelled, first and last names have been reversed."

Those votes have been counted in the past, he said. "As long as it's clear, you would still count those votes."

Mead is one of six candidates vying for the seat of retiring Court of Appeals Judge Frank Eldridge. Four other Court of Appeals judges also are up for election but they have no opponents.