Shelby County Election Commission Responds To Voting Issues

UPDATE 7/24) This release was just sent by the Shelby County Election Commission:

“The Shelby County Election Commission has identified and taken corrective actions related to “wrong ballots” being given to a limited number of voters in certain precincts during the Early Voting period. 

The discrepancies between ballots and voting precincts were found after the commission was alerted to a potential problem by a nominee for the District 1 County Commission Seat.  The specific discrepancies identified dealt with Tennessee House District 93 and 98.  While only those districts were questioned, the Election Commission conducted a Street Range Block examination for all current precincts for all state contested house and senate races with precincts in Shelby County.   

“We would like to thank the candidate as well as other citizens who have been so diligent during this early voting period in pointing out potential areas of concern so we can investigate them and make corrections as soon possible,” said Robert D. Meyers, Chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission.”

(Memphis) More than 1000 voters may have received the wrong ballot when they went to the polls last week, that’s the claim by Steve Ross.

He says he matched up a list of people who voted early with state maps and found 1019 people in Shelby County voted for the wrong representatives.

“My intention here is not to play gotcha with the Elections Commission, but rather to give them the means to fix problems where they exist because if they don’t know that they are there. If people don’t report them they can’t fix the problem.”

Elections Commission Chairman Robert Meyers said they are investigating the claims.

“Even one person essentially voting out of position concerns us, because we want to get it right,” he said. “We are very interested if he is correct and we will make whatever fixes are necessary in our database.”

Ross said the problem with the database stems from redistricting, where several people changed representation.

“There are five districts that are very tightly mashed together. That creates a lot of opportunity for failure.”

If Ross is right, the system failed more than 4 percent of the people who voted early.

“Right now with all the issues it doesn’t look like we’re doing good, but we’re doing okay,” Meyers said. “It’s our hope that we have little impact on these elections.”

Ross is running for County Commission, but said his race is not affected by these potential irregularities.

He said the representative and congressional races are the problem.

For a list of people Ross claims voted in the wrong district go to his blog : http://www.vibincblog.com/