380 voters suspected of crossover voting in Jefferson County, drops to 0 after internal investigation
JEFFERSON COUNTY, AL (WBRC) - Nearly 400 people have been flagged for possible crossover voting just in Jefferson County.
Monday WBRC Fox6 News found out after an investigation, it was all poll worker error.
After an internal investigation the county actually found that 300 of those mistakes came from just one precinct.
The precinct marked the Democratic voters in the voter book just as they would for absentee voters. This made the state think that all 300 democratic voters crossed over and voted in the Republican runoff. At the end of the day, the state and county both say they learned from their mistakes.
Secretary of State John Merrill says a way to eliminate this is to implement electronic poll voting.
"If we have electronic poll books, the protocol is that you are using the instrument to advance through the process ask you if you are taking a Democratic or Republican ballot. It is automatically coded. It's automatically recorded and then when you get the poll book in place for the next election it is already there," Merrill explains.
Jefferson County Probate Judge Alan King says he disagrees with criminalizing voters to begin with and that counties did not have enough time to educate voters.
Copyright 2017 WBRC. All rights reserved.
