Franklin County elections officials are scrambling to figure out how many voters received the wrong ballot in the mail as thousands more lined up across the state for the first day of in-person early voting.
Problems with a thus-far undetermined portion of about 250,000 ballots mailed to Franklin County voters emerged Tuesday afternoon as the first wave of a record number of absentee ballots hit mailboxes.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office has directed the board to provide replacement ballots along with a letter explaining the error to all voters affected by the problem.
Franklin County elections staffers learned of the problem when voters noticed irregularities in their ballots and contacted the board or LaRose’s office. Voters in Worthington reported receiving ballots for elections in Whitehall. Others got ballots with the wrong congressional race. Ballots for one precinct went to voters in another.
In some cases, one member of a household received the correct ballot while another received the wrong ballot.