Jefferson County Election Commission and ballot printers adding precautions after wrong ballots ended up in Brighton

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Ala. (WBRC) - The Jefferson County Election Commission is implementing additional measures following a mistake that led to the wrong ballots being delivered to Brighton on Primary Election Day.

Jefferson County Probate Judge Jim Naftel says the ballot mistake was not on their end and after a meeting with the ballot printers Thursday, they know the commission’s data was input incorrectly at the printers.

“They were very forthright to their credit. They said ‘yep, this was an issue on our end’. Y’all gave us the correct information, we just coded and entered it wrong. So from that point, it is just discussing how it doesn’t happen again,” said Judge Naftel.

Naftel says both the printers and the commission will be adding additional data checks going forward to further limit the chance for human error. The Election Commission will also now check all of the boxes before they are sent out to the voting precincts.

“It is incumbent on us to try and make sure that it doesn’t happen again. That will give us a little more lead time, so if there is some kind of mix up and not doing it on election day, we are doing it five days ahead of time,” said Judge Naftel.

Naftel also says this is not an example of voter disenfranchisement.

“It wasn’t specific to Brighton. It wasn’t targeted at them, or any party, or at any individual or any candidate. It was a simple human error that could have happened at any one of our 176 precincts. It just happened to be Brighton and I hate it for them.”

In total, there were seventeen 17 provisional ballots cast in Brighton and 9 of those were cast between the extended hours of 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

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