More than 1,100 registered voters in Athens-Clarke County opened their mailboxes this week to find something they weren't expecting: a second absentee ballot for the November 3 midterm election. County elections officials say the mix-up affected 1,154 voters and stemmed from a data error sent to the printer responsible for producing the ballots.
According to CBS News, the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government Elections Department confirmed the duplicate mailing after voters began reporting the problem. Athens-Clarke County Elections Director Pam Long said the mailing error traced back to an address file sent to a state-authorized printer that included entries duplicated from an earlier mailing list. The first batch of absentee ballots went out October 5, as required under Georgia law, and the county learned of the duplicate mailing just two days later, on October 7, when voters alerted the department.
How the Printer Error Happened
The county sent a voter address list to a state-authorized printer, and in this case, officials say an older list got mixed in with the current one, resulting in duplicate entries for 1,154 voters. The county has not detailed how many of the roughly 1,100-plus affected voters have already received their notices or returned extra ballots, and whether the supplemental manual review will slow down processing remains an open question.
Long said her department identified the issue and is now tracking every affected ballot individually. The Elections Department says it is issuing expedited notices to all 1,154 impacted voters and has put supplemental manual reviews in place for returned absentee ballots, so that only one ballot per voter gets accepted, per WXIA 11Alive.
What Voters Should Do With the Extra Ballot
County authorities have specific instructions for anyone holding a duplicate ballot: shred the extra copy, or bring it in person to the elections office at 155 E. Washington Street. Voters are explicitly warned against mailing the extra ballot back separately, tossing it intact in the trash or recycling, handing it off to someone else, or stuffing both ballots into a single envelope — any of those moves could create confusion during processing, CBS News reports.
Officials stress that Georgia's statewide system is designed to prevent anyone from actually casting two ballots, regardless of how many copies land in a mailbox. GARViS, the Georgia Registered Voters Information System, replaced the state's legacy ElectioNet database when it launched in March 2023 across all 159 counties, according to Grady Newsource. The system manages more than 12 million voter records statewide and provides voter and election information.
The Legal Stakes of Trying to Vote Twice
While the database is designed to catch any attempt at casting more than one ballot, state law treats the act of trying as a serious crime. Fraudulent double voting is a felony, carrying a prison sentence of one to 10 years and fines of up to $100,000. Georgia lawmakers classify repeat voting as a felony offense rather than a minor administrative slip-up, underscoring why officials are urging affected voters to dispose of or return extras rather than hang onto them.
The timing adds another wrinkle for Athens-Clarke County voters navigating the mix-up. Under Senate Bill 202, absentee ballot applications for the November 3 election can only be submitted between 78 and 11 days before Election Day, which puts the final application deadline at Friday, October 23, per the same CBS News report. That narrowed window, a significant tightening from pre-2021 rules, leaves less room for voters to sort out paperwork problems before the deadline closes.
For now, county officials maintain that the duplicate mailing is a printing and address-list error rather than a security breach, and that the safeguards built into the state's voter database will keep the midterm election count accurate.
