Elections office continues to fix voter ID envelope error

The Butler County Board of Elections is working to correct an error on mail-in voting envelopes that were submitted by dozens for the Nov. 6 election.

Earlier this week, the elections office called the Journal-News to say it made a mistake on its value ID envelope sent to 20,000 voters that requested a vote-by-mail ballot. Election officials told the Journal-News this week the form did not have enough boxes for voters verifying their ID only with their driver’s license. Ohio driver’s licenses have eight characters, two letters of six numbers, but only six boxes were provided on the form.

Board of election officials sent out 20,000 notices to voters who requested an early ballot on or before Oct. 10. Any voter requesting an early ballot on and after Oct. 11 has the correct voter ID envelope.

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Of the 20,000 ballots that were mailed with the error on the voter ID envelope, 139, or 1 percent, have been returned with an incomplete driver’s license number, election officials said Friday.

Of the 139 returned ballots, 53 voters have returned the notices correcting the error. Of the remaining 86 ballots that still need the correct documentation, 46 voters were called by an elections official and said they would return the notice.

“We expect more corrections to come in soon because the mass mailing was sent this week,” elections Director Diane Noonan and Deputy Director Eric Corbin said in a joint statement. “The Board of Elections will continue to reach out to these voters as much as possible to make sure as many ballots as possible are counted.”

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