Virginia Politics

At least 1,400 Virginia voters get duplicate absentee ballots amid rush to meet high demand, officials say

By Antonio Olivo
September 25, 2020 at 6:01 p.m. EDT

At least 1,400 Virginia voters have received duplicate absentee ballots in recent weeks because of clerical errors, but election officials said Friday only one ballot per voter would be counted.

Officials in Fairfax County, the state’s largest jurisdiction, said a printing problem with absentee-ballot address labels led election workers to inadvertently mail out extra ballots to as many as 1,000 county voters.

A similar problem with printing labels occurred with a smaller number of voters in Henrico County and the city of Richmond, officials there said.

The Fairfax and Henrico officials blamed the errors on the record demand for absentee ballots and early voting in an election year when concerns about the coronavirus have people worried about going to crowded polling stations to vote in person.

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Antonio Olivo
Antonio Olivo covers government, politics and other issues in Northern Virginia. He has also reported from Afghanistan and Mexico after joining The Washington Post in 2013. Follow https://twitter.com/aolivo