There's little recourse for the estimated 100 Woodbury County residents who received the wrong House district ballot inside their absentee ballot envelope, Deputy Secretary of State Linda Langenberg said today.

"Not at this point," she said, noting that the ballots would have been sorted by precinct, mingled and taken out of the affidavit envelope. "Once it's out of that envelope, there's no way of knowing whose ballot it is."

A new law requiring absentee ballots to be sorted by precinct helped to cause the problem with the wrong ballots, Langenberg said. The law meant that a satellite voting station could have 140 different ballot styles and would have to figure out the correct one for each voter. Langenberg said none of those votes in House races where voters got the wrong ballot can be counted.

About 1,500 absentee ballots were being counted this afternoon in Woodbury County, where at least one legislative race still hangs in the balance. The board met at noon and as of 3:45 p.m., neither Langenberg nor the Republican or Democratic leadership knew the results of that count. A follow-up call to Woodbury County Auditor Patrick Gill was not returned.

Still undetermined was the race between incumbent state Rep. Wes Whitead, D-Sioux City, and Republican challenger Jeremy Taylor in House District 1. Whitead was six votes ahead before the final tally of absentee ballots.

Labels: 2008_election