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Butler County Ballots Will Be Counted Despite Mistake On Envelopes

Karen Kasler

Voters in southwest Ohio’s Butler County who returned ballots in envelopes that didn’t have the correct information on them will get their votes counted anyway. 

The mail in ballots sent to about 20,000 registered Butler County voters were fine. But the envelopes for them contained six boxes for the voter’s driver’s license number. 

Eight are actually needed. But Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office is telling the county to count any of those returned anyway. Jen Miller with the Ohio League of Women Voters applauds that decision.

“There are many different ways to verify that this is the right individual voting and if everything else looked right then count their vote because it wasn’t the fault of the voter. It was a human error on the part of Butler County," Miller says.

The Secretary of State’s directive is limited to voters who only provided incomplete driver’s license numbers. Voters could also provide the last four digits of their social security numbers on the envelopes and there were never questions about the validity of envelopes for voters who did that.

Copyright 2018 The Statehouse News Bureau

Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment.