US: New absentee ballots will be sent to voters in one of Florida's most populous counties to replace thousands that disappeared in the run-up to Tuesday's US elections, an election official said yesterday.
In an echo of the problems that dogged the 2000 presidential election, officials in hotly-contested Broward County said this week that nearly 60,000 absentee ballots, mailed on October 7th and 8th, had not reached voters' homes.
By yesterday, with US Postal Service investigators hunting for the missing ballots, thousands had turned up in the mail, but many others were still unaccounted for.
"We are going to send out new ballots. We're trying to figure out how many and how best to get them to the voters," said Ms Gisela Salas, Broward's deputy supervisor of elections.
Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper she expected to have to replace no more than 20,000 of the original 58,000 sent out. The county has more than one million registered voters.
In 2000 the race in Florida, on which the national presidential contest ultimately depended, was so close it prompted five weeks of lawsuits and recounts.
Broward election officials assured voters they could still cast ballots, even if their requested absentee ballots did not show up, by going to early polling stations which are open in the days before Tuesday's election. Poll workers will be able to conduct computer cross-checks to determine whether voters had already sent in absentee ballots, the officials said.