An unknown amount of people have cast their ballots in the incorrect district during early voting in Nashville.
Early voting has been going on in Nashville for the past two weeks, and today, November 3rd is the last day of early voting. But the election office recently discovered that several voters cast their ballots in the wrong district.
The Davidson County Election office and its administrator Jeff Roberts only just found out about the situation. But at this point in time, it’s impossible to change anything.
What Happened?
This is not a case of voter fraud. Rather, this is due to an error in the voting re-districting that took place in January 2022.
The state congress redrew voting districts last year and passed them into law in January, a process that takes place regularly, every ten years. This cycle’s redistricting was especially controversial. The Republican majority redrew the maps in a way that the Democrats took issue with.
Previously, Nashville only contained one congressional district, and it typically ended up voting blue. But after the redistricting, Nashville split into three congressional districts, and each district contains a large amount of the rural areas outside of Nashville.
This means that all of these districts will likely vote red in the upcoming election. And the changes in districting caused a lot of confusion in the county election offices.
In the early voting process, it appears the election offices were slightly confused about the lines of the new districts. So they sent incorrect ballots to certain voters by mistake. These voters cast their ballots, which ended up being for the wrong congressional race.
190 votes were cast in the incorrect congressional race, 16 votes were incorrectly cast in the wrong state senate race, and 6 votes were cast in the wrong state house race.
What Happens Now?
According the election office, the mistake has been rectified. Now, voters will definitely receive the correct ballots. However, the election office cannot rescind or correct the already cast ballots. So all of these 200+ incorrect ballots will be cast in the wrong election in Nashville. The votes still count.
All ballots placed in the ballot scanner during Early Voting and on Election Day will be counted.
— Davidson County Elections (@DavidsonVotes) November 3, 2022
