A polling place in Northern Virginia had to turn voters away for about an hour Tuesday because the ballots there had been misprinted.
The two-sided ballots at Rippon Middle School in Woodbridge had the same races on both sides. The problem wasn’t discovered until ballots were handed out to voters.
Voters were told to leave and come back later.
“I said, ‘Well how long is it going to take you to get new ballots?’” voter Rhonda Reed said. “And their response was, ‘I don’t know. I’m calling now to check it out.’ For me that was not acceptable because I have to get to work, like a lot of people have to get to work, and you know, you get so much time off and you may not be able to make it back, so you’re making me miss my vote, and I was just very unhappy with that.”
New ballots were printed in Manassas and taken to the polling place, which was closed for about an hour.
Bill Waibel did return to cast a ballot.
“I think it could be a big problem, especially if we get a real close election like we had last time,” he said about the voters unable to return to cast ballots. “Every vote counted last time, especially.”
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Voter Bill Janke said he doesn’t have confidence in the tally from the Rippon polling place.
“I don’t know what they can do about it,” he said. “It’s like elections all the time. Some of them count, some of them don’t. It depends on who’s in charge.”
The defective ballots did not scan and were not counted, officials said.
