HAMILTON, Ohio — A printing mishap has the potential to send some Butler County absentee ballots to the wrong place.
"The good news is that this is a very, very small portion of voters," Butler County Board of Elections Deputy Director Eric Corbin said. "The number we identified is 30 voters out of the 22,000 that have requested (absentee ballots)."
Several voters noticed their absentee ballot packets had return envelopes with the Clermont County Board of Elections address.
"It is alarming," said Carly Huff, a voter who cast her ballot in person in Hamilton Monday morning. "I think as a young college person, I'm not even sure I would catch that."
Corbin said the county's printing contractor, Graphic Village, prints absentee material for both Butler and Clermont counties. The company uses a "very accurate" automated system that uses barcodes to verify envelopes and ballots go to the correct locations, Corbin said.
However, a re-printing of return envelopes forced the contractor's staff to by-hand stuff reply envelopes into no more than 30 packets.
"That's where the mistake was made," Corbin said. "Unfortunately they grabbed an envelope from a different county when they should have checked from Butler County. So, we've worked with the vendor and they have a new process in place to ensure that this is something that doesn't happen again in the future."
In this case, voters either received a correct reply envelope in the mail or voters verified that their ballot packages had no problems.
Still, some voters shared photos of the mistake with WCPO 9 News while wondering if any ballots could be mailed to the wrong place.
"It's certainly possible that a handful of voters may have done so," Corbin said. "So, we've reached out to the other counties, made them aware of this issue. The good thing is this is a perfect example of why the checks and balances in our system work. There's no way that county is going to look at that ballot and accidentally think it's theirs or not know what to do with it."
The post office delivered four trays of Hamilton County absentee ballots to the Butler County Board of Elections. Within hours, both staffs worked to get all ballots to where they belonged.
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