NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — On this Election Day Eve, NewsChannel 5 learned even Davidson County early voters may have received the wrong ballot. Initially, the Davidson County Election Commission thought about 212 voters were impacted. Now the number is up to 438.
Early last Wednesday, when Administrator of Elections Jeff Roberts learned they had given more than 200 voters the wrong ballot, his office thought they had fixed the issue.
"You can imagine what’s happening at 3 o’clock in the morning," said Roberts.
But it turns out, they doubled their problems.
"We went out there trying to update our system, the problem was, some of those did not need to be corrected and when we tried to fix those, it now created a problem for other people," said Roberts.
Now, using state data, the election commission has released a list of 438 names of early voters that they've determined may have gotten the wrong ballot.
If your name is on the list, you now have the option of coming to the Davidson County Election Commission's office on Murfreesboro Road and voting again. But this time, it would be through a provisional ballot in a yellow envelope with your name on it.
"It will go into a locked and concealed bin that will only be opened up in the event of a race, that a race is contested," said Roberts.
If you didn't vote early but plan to vote on Election Day, this information is for you. Because the county's voting machines have to be programmed well in advance, and a lot of the original ballots were wrong, some of you may have to vote using a paper ballot. Even though it's on paper, those ballots will still count toward the Election Night total.
"Essentially 600 ballot marking devices would have to be programmed correctly and then shipped to the right location. So we were running out of time to do that," he said.
NewsChannel 5 asked Roberts — with two big mistakes like these in a row — how they can be trusted they've finally gotten this, right?
"We’ve had more time to try to confirm exactly that we match the state records as far as addresses go and we know exactly who was impacted," said Roberts.
NewsChannel 5 also asked Roberts if they've had time to figure out what the mapping issue was in the first place, that caused the initial mistake.
Roberts told NewsChannel 5, they're focused right now on getting everything else right about Election Day. They'll focus on a thorough investigation, later this week.
