To correct mistakes stemming from an error in the Pulaski County voter registration database, some voters in the Nov. 8 general election will be given a ballot originally meant for voters in a different precinct, the county's Board of Election Commissioners decided Monday.
Election Coordinator Amanda Dickens told the board that, due to the database error, all voters in Precinct 4 were assigned to House District 71, even though 527 of them are in House District 69.
To fix the problem, the commission unanimously approved giving the affected voters a ballot from Precinct 1 that contains the District 69 race as well as the other races and issues that should have been on the voters' Precinct 4 ballot.
Both precincts use the same polling place, Dickens said, and the poll book data has been updated so that voters will receive the appropriate ballots.
The Pulaski County clerk's office has also been notified of the appropriate absentee ballot to send voters who request one, Dickens said.
"No voters will be affected by this at all," Dickens told the commissioners.
Dickens said, however, the change will mean the affected Precinct 4 votes will show up in election results as coming from Precinct 1. Because of voter confidentiality laws, it won't be possible to figure out how many actually came from Precinct 4, she said.
The alternative, though was to "reprint our whole entire ballot set," which would have delayed getting absentee ballots to the clerk's office and possibly getting paper ballots for Election Day, she said.
"It would have been more of a nightmare than just doing a substitution," Dickens said.