The Michigan Absentee Ballot

image A picture purporting to show a scanned copy of the Michigan Absentee Ballot has been spreading around. Look at it carefully. It would definitely put the Florida Butterfly Ballot to shame. There appears to be no way to vote for Bush/Cheney, but if you decide to vote for Kerry/Edwards, you're really voting for Bush/Cheney. Is the ballot real? Apparently so. It was a ballot printing error, but was confined to one precinct and mailed out to only 69 people. Brad Wittman, from the Michigan Secretary of State's Office, was contacted by someone at Metafilter, and this was his comment:

The ballot printing error is confined to a single precinct in the City of Alma. Approximately 69 ballots containing the error were released to voters on Monday, September 27. On Tuesday, September 28, a voter called the clerk to alert her to the error. Arrangements have been made to send the 69 voters replacement ballots. The clerk expects to receive corrected ballots on Monday, October 4. In the meantime, a voter who received one of the misprinted ballots posted a scan of the ballot on the web. This has created far more interest (an outrage) than what is warranted.

Politics

Posted on Tue Oct 05, 2004


Comments

Before I was reading the school prank blog, False Alert was at the top. When I went back to the main page, this one was at the top!!! I guess this means Alex is a real person after all.
Posted by john  on  Tue Oct 05, 2004  at  04:42 PM
Or Alex could be an automated bot programmed to post things at different times of the day.
Posted by The Curator  in  San Diego  on  Tue Oct 05, 2004  at  04:46 PM
These American elections seem a bit too complicated.... whats wrong with the good old British method of putting a cross in a box next to a name?
Posted by Andrew Nixon  on  Tue Oct 05, 2004  at  08:15 PM
It sickens me to see things like this. I worked in publishing for about 5 years and we checked EVERYTHING with at least 4 different people and we were just writing computer books. For this priting error to get out with something as important as a ballot lets you know that no one gives a f***.
Posted by Kaitain  on  Wed Oct 06, 2004  at  07:14 AM
hmmm...i'm wondering if had there not been an alert citizen calling them on it, would they have let it "slide"?
Posted by cleopatra j  on  Thu Oct 07, 2004  at  05:57 PM
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