In this photo illustration, an absentee voter mail-in ballot shows the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates for the November 5 US general election, including Democratic party candidates US Vice President Kamala Harris and her ru (Getty Images)
PALM BEACH CO., Fla. (FOX 9) – More than 250 general election ballots from a county in Florida misspelled the name of Vice Presidential candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as “Tom” Walz, according to the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office.
READ MORE: MN early voting: Where and how to cast a ballot before Election Day
What we know
A “typographical error” resulted in some ballots reading “Tom” instead of “Tim” Walz, according to the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office.
County election officials say the error was caught 18 hours after the ballots were sent out and was isolated to 257 military and overseas emailed ballots.
READ MORE: Faribault County ballots misprinted, switched parties for state representative race
How did this happen?
Officials say the error happened when the approved ballot was sent to a vendor who made a manual typed change to the ballot without authorization.
It was during the manual type change that the vendor incorrectly wrote “Tom” Walz instead of “Tim” Walz.
The election office said it didn’t know about the change until after the final ballot version was sent to them.
READ MORE: Candidate calls out ‘unacceptable’ ballot mixup in Zumbro Falls
How was it fixed?
The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office said that once the error was found, the vendor immediately corrected it.
The affected voters who had not yet voted were then emailed a recommendation to download the updated ballot.
Officials said the error does not have any impact on the count of the electronic ballots and emphasized that “every vote will count as the voter intended.”
This mistake will also not affect any other military and overseas ballots or domestic ballots, the elections office said.
Ballot issues in Minnesota
There have also been misprints on ballots in Minnesota, which resulted in one Minnesota House race being mixed up with another district while the candidates in another Minnesota House race had their parties switched.
Earlier this week in Zumbro Falls, a Wabasha County ballot misprint listed the wrong Minnesota House race, showing District 20A instead of District 20B.
This led to the race between Republican incumbent Steven Jacob and Democrat Michael Hutchinson’s race being omitted and replaced with Heather Arndt and Pam Altendorf’s District 20A race.
A sample ballot scan for Zumbro Falls on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website includes the same error, even though the website itself lists the correct race.
On the day early voting started in Minnesota last week, it was found that candidates were listed with the wrong party designation for the House District 23A race in Faribault County. Republican candidate Rep. Peggy Bennett was listed as a DFL candidate while her Democrat opponent, Joe Staloch, was listed as a member of the GOP.
That mistake appeared to be limited to Faribault County.
The Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office said because ballots are prepared by their respective counties, the ballots in Freeborn, Steele and Waseca counties were correct.
