When elections officials in Palm Beach County, Fla., emailed ballots last week to military and overseas voters, they failed to notice a typographical error: The name of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic nominee for vice president, was misspelled as “Tom Walz.”
The office was made aware of the error less than 18 hours after the ballots went out, Wendy Sartory Link, the county’s elections supervisor, said on Sunday.
“The error was isolated to 257 electronic ballots,” she said in an email, adding that the misspelling had been “immediately corrected.” The affected voters were emailed a recommendation to download the updated ballot, she said.
The New York Times learned of the error from a concerned voter overseas who sent the newspaper a screenshot of her misspelled ballot. The voter said she had contacted Ms. Link’s office but not yet received a response.
Ms. Link — a Democrat whose re-election bid is on the ballot — said her office had sent an “accurate ballot file” to its vendor. The vendor then made a “manual typed change” to the ballot and “incorrectly typed ‘Tom’ instead of ‘Tim.’”
“The elections office was never notified of the manual change,” she said.
She said that the error would not affect the counting of the votes. “The error in no way affects the proper tabulation of any of the electronic ballots and every vote will count as the voter intended,” Ms. Link said. “This error does not affect any other military and overseas ballots or domestic ballots.”
During the 2000 presidential election recount, Palm Beach County became notorious for its “butterfly ballot,” which listed candidates on both sides of the ballot, with voters required to punch a corresponding hole in the middle. But the order of candidates listed did not align with the holes to punch.
After the election, many voters said — and data showed — that they had intended to vote for then-Vice President Al Gore, the Democrat, but had instead voted for Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate.
Florida determined the outcome of the 2000 election, with George W. Bush beating Mr. Gore by fewer than 600 votes.
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