Cerro Gordo works to resolve ballot printing issue

(ABC 6 News) – The Cerro Gordo auditor’s office has reportedly resolved issues that prevented some early-morning ballots from being scanned.

Election Deputy Tracie Siemers confirmed that voters at the Highland Golf Course in Mason City were asked to put ballots in an “emergency ballot bin” while the county works on a scanner issue prevented those ballots from being scanned.

Cerro Gordo County auditor Adam Wedmore said the Highland scanner’s team had missed a step setting up the machine, which he corrected shortly after 7 a.m.

Wedmore said the collected ballots were scanned this morning.

Wedmore also said a printing issue at Grace Evangelical Free Church, another Cerro Gordo voting site, caused some ballots to be rejected due to an issue that was “invisible to the naked eye.”

However, Wedmore said Cerro Gordo election officials identified the printer issue quickly and estimate that only about a dozen ballots in the first 100 packaged had the printer issue.

Wedmore said that when election judges identified the printer issue, they had voters still at the site spoil the faulty ballots and submit new ones to be scanned.

The rejected ballots, he added, have been collected and inventoried and no other voting locations have reported printing issues.

Wedmore said a bipartisan team of election officials will compare the list of voters with the county’s list of scanned ballots, duplicate any unscanned ballots later today and scan them.

A previous version of this post indicated that the printing issue had taken place at Highland Golf Course. Wedmore clarified that the Highland and Grace Evangelical voting sites had different early-morning issues.