Elections Dept: error impacts dozens of Oglethorpe Ave ballot cards

On this election eve comes word of problems with dozens of ballot cards in Athens: the Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections says 66 voters who live on Oglethorpe Avenue were mistakenly placed in District 5 instead of District 2. There are Tuesday elections in District 2, one pitting Athens-Clarke County Commission incumbent Melissa Link against challenger Jason Jacobs, and another with Clarke County School Board incumbent Claudia Butts challenged by Kirrena Gallagher and Mary Bagby. The Elections Board says no actual ballots were impacted by the mistake with the ballot cards.

From the Athens-Clarke Co government website…

The Athens-Clarke County Elections Department has discovered an error that affects 66 voters who live between 147 Oglethorpe Avenue and 545 Oglethorpe Avenue. The error mistakenly placed these addresses in Commission District 5 instead of Commission District 2.

Even-numbered Commission districts, including Commission District 2, are up for election in 2024 while odd-numbered Commission districts are not. While no cast votes were affected by the error, voters who live at these addresses did receive precinct cards earlier this year that incorrectly listed them as residing in Commission District 5.

Elections Department staff are going door-to-door to these affected addresses before Election Day on May 21, 2024, to provide information about their correct location in Commission District 2.

Changes to voting precinct lines and several polling locations were approved in 2023 that affected nearly two-thirds of all registered voters. During the process of updating the information about these Oglethorpe Avenue addresses for Precinct 5C at Johnnie Lay Burks Elementary School, the Commission district was mistakenly changed from Commission District 2 to Commission District 5.

On May 13, 2024, the Elections Department was initially alerted to an issue by a resident who, before casting their ballot, did not see the Commission District 2 election on their ballot. After determining they were mistakenly placed in the wrong district, the poll worker issued them the correct ballot for voting.

Elections staff continued to investigate the issue and determined that a stretch of addresses from 147-545 Oglethorpe Avenue was affected by the same error. These errors were corrected in the statewide voting registration system on the same day.

On May 15, 2024, a second voter in the same address range informed a poll worker before casting their ballot that it did not include Commission District 2. They were also provided with a correct ballot.

A further investigation found that the local check-in poll pads had not fully updated from the statewide database with this corrected information. Early polling locations were provided with the updated information for any affected voters until the updating error was corrected on May 16. Research into votes determined that no voter in this stretch of Oglethorpe Avenue addresses had cast an incorrect in-person or absentee ballot.

“Elections staff would like to extend our thanks to the voters who alerted us to this important issue,” said Elections Department Director Charlotte Sosebee. “We take great pride in the accuracy of our elections and immediately acted upon their information to investigate and correct the issue.”

All voters are reminded when voting in-person to check and verify their ballots before casting them. Voters are also encouraged to visit the Georgia Secretary of State’s My Voter Page (mvp.sos.ga.gov/) to look at sample ballots and verify their precinct card information prior to voting.

GA Secretary of State’s My Voter Page

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