APPLETON (NBC26) — Outagamie County poll workers are duplicating thousands of misprinted absentee ballots on Election Day.
The error is a small scratch on the timing mark located at the bottom of the ballot in one of the black squares. It's hardly noticeable, but enough that the machines can't properly read the ballots.
Kathy VanBoxtel is chief election inspector at the Celebration Ministry Center in Appleton. She estimates volunteers will go through up to 1,500 absentee ballots and expects hundreds of those will need to be duplicated.
Volunteers are sorting through the absentee ballots at tables in the back of the polling site. They need to remake ones with the timing mark error by hand.
Two chief inspectors transfer what's on the original ballot onto a duplicate one. They'll later put the error-free ballot through the tabulator so the vote is counted.
"One election inspector will tell the other one on the original ballot what they voted for. We will fill in those ovals that they voted for, and then we will keep that original ballot in a separate envelope and put the duplicate one through the machine so that their votes will be counted," VanBoxtel said.
Although more work for election volunteers, VanBoxtel said the remakes will be accurate.
"Because there are two election inspectors doing this, we're both overseeing what each other is doing," VanBoxtlel said. "So the chance for error is very, very minimal because we're cross checking it."
There are around 20 volunteers at the District 13 polling site helping with the absentee ballots and in-person voting.
District 7 poll workers went through a similar process.
Kevin Loosen worked as chief election inspector at First English Lutheran Church. He said they had a 45-minute wait when the polls opened Tuesday morning that quickly went down.
With one group of volunteers going through absentee ballots at one table and another group duplicating the misprints, Loosen said there isn't a lot of room for error.
“I mean there’s always a chance for that, but I think the process we have set up right now will help prevent that, because we have three people working on it so we have three sets of eyes making sure everything is exactly the same," Loosen said.
Loosen said their polling site had 15 volunteers, including a few members of the National Guard.
Outagamie County election officials said they are still waiting on results from two Appleton districts and the town of Dale. As of 10:30 p.m. the County Clerk's office said Dale needed to count 800 absentee ballots.