Pennsylvania county resending nearly 29K ballots after error

A Pennsylvania county is resending nearly 29,000 ballots to voters after a printing error led to voters receiving incorrect ballots.

The Allegheny County Elections Division announced Wednesday that 28,879 voters received incorrect ballots out of the 32,318 that were in the state’s ballot tracker as of Sept. 28.

The Division said the mailings are being corrected and that new ballots will be delivered starting Oct. 15, with most expected to be delivered the week of Oct. 19.

“The integrity of our election system is of utmost importance to me as the Elections Division Manager and to our entire team,” Elections Division manager David Voye said in a statement. “Voters in this county should be confident that their votes are accurately counted and protected.” 

The county first said it was made aware of the issue on Oct. 9 after about 20 voters reported that they had been sent the wrong ballot. The issue was attributed to a “ballot image mapping error” that resulted in individual voter’s information being matched to the ballot for the next voter in the batch. 

Voye said that Elections Division staff were segregating ballots that were received from voters affected by the issue, and those will be set aside and reviewed following the election.

Mail-in ballots have become a hot-button issue amid the coronavirus pandemic, with some voters wary of in-person voting citing a potential risk for infection.

As of Wednesday, Allegheny County has approved mail-in ballot applications for 371,062 voters, of which about 35,000 to 40,000 still have to be mailed.

A similar incident happened in Ohio, when someone changed a setting on a machine that placed absentee ballots into mailing envelopes, leading to about 50,000 incorrect ballots being sent.

The issue was corrected, and new ballots are being sent. However, the incident caught the attention of President Trump, who has repeatedly alleged that mail-in voting would lead to widespread voter fraud despite a lack of evidence.

“Breaking News: 50,000 OHIO VOTERS getting WRONG ABSENTEE BALLOTS,” Trump tweeted on Oct. 9. “Out of control. A Rigged Election!!!”