NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Nashville's election administrator said Wednesday that more than 3,000 voters were slated to receive incorrect ballots in this week's election — had the ballot problems throughout the city gone undetected.
On Wednesday, Davidson County Election Administrator Jeff Roberts said following the political redistricting earlier this year, 3,637 registered voters in Nashville were wrongly listed in the election commission's databases in a congressional, state senate or state house district that wasn't actually theirs. In other words, those voters were on track to receive a ballot at their polling place that would have had them vote for an incorrect race.
As previously reported, only 438 voters actually cast an incorrect ballot among that larger pool of 3,637 people that could have shown up to vote on an incorrect ballot.
The number of potential voters released Wednesday doesn't indicate that the scope of the actual ballot error in Nashville was any worse than previously thought on Election Night, but because Roberts says the same error also existed in the May and August primary elections, the new number provides insight into how many total voters may have cast incorrect ballots in those elections.
POTENTIALLY HUNDREDS MORE INCORRECT BALLOTS CAST IN PRIMARIES
Roberts said Wednesday it would be difficult to determine a specific number of how many voters cast incorrect ballots in May and August.
"Just to think about everyone that has moved since then — our records show where they are today, not where they were in May, so that would be a challenging task," Roberts said.
The Election Commission's website lists around 480,000 registered voters in Nashville during the May and August primaries, with 120,507 votes cast in those elections.
According to a NewsChannel 5 analysis, assuming a similar proportion of incorrect ballots was present in the primaries as there was in the general election, it's possible that nearly 900 votes could have been improperly cast between the two Nashville primary elections.
Roberts warned Wednesday that the 3,637 number of improperly listed Nashville voters likely included many inactive voters who have since moved out of the city.
BALLOT ERROR INVESTIGATION TO BEGIN IN DECEMBER
Roberts says a deep investigation into what happened with the discrepancy between the election commission's address list and the correct state list won't begin until December — following a five-day appeal period after the election is certified on Nov. 28.
Roberts says the investigation will look into why, in some cases, the election commission's data excluded individual homes from the district they belonged in while including neighboring homes.
"For these things that look extremely odd, is there something that ties them all together? Do they have something in common as to why they weren't on our list correctly?" Roberts said.
WILL ELECTION ADMINISTRATOR RESIGN?
Roberts repeated Wednesday the importance of voters having confidence that their vote will be counted properly, even after the two errors leading up to Election Night.
"They've got to feel good about coming out to vote," Roberts said.
But Roberts, who is appointed by the Republican-majority five-member Davidson County Election Commission, says for now he has no plans to resign.
"At this point in time, no," Roberts said. "I feel good that I'm doing a good job for the voters of Davidson County."
"I've tried to do a good job, contact the media when there's a problem, let you guys know what the issue is," Roberts said. "The staff here has spent a lot of hours trying to put together a good election on November 8th, and based on the results so far, we think we've accomplished that."
