When Douglas Chester in American Fork opened his mailbox on Wednesday, he was a little perplexed.

In his mail was his absentee ballot. Problem is, he already received his ballot in the mail, filled it out and sent it in. This was a second ballot in his name.

"I am always concerned about loopholes," he said. "Will they have situations where they [the county elections staff] don't catch someone voting twice or three timesfi"

Chester said he called the county elections office to report his extra ballot.

Sandy Hoffmann, the Utah County elections coordinator, said Chester's was the second double ballot to be reported to the county.

The machine printing the ballots jammed and double printed about 20 ballots, she said. County elections workers thought they had caught all the double ballots and destroyed them, but apparently at least two slipped through.

"I don't know that this is a widespread problem," she said. "When you have human beings doing anything, stuff happens."

Because of early voting this year, the elections process has been more stressful than usual, and Hoffmann said she relies on a staff of temporary workers who must be trained quickly.

"I don't think people understand how much goes into this," she said. "I think we are doing a good job. With early elections we now have 11 days of elections and it is a lot. I think the election is going really smoothly so far."

Anyone reporting a double absentee ballot has been advised to destroy it, she said. Anyone else who finds one in the mail should do the same.

"There is nothing sinister going on," she said. "People make mistakes, it's not anything that is big news."

Even if someone tries to commit voter fraud by filling out a second absentee ballot, the statewide computer voter tracking system will not record more than one vote per registered voter, she said.

"You can't scan more than one ballot in per voter," she said. "It's a very complex computer program, and it's a lot smarter than I am and I am thankful for that. I kind of want to laugh. We will try to correct any errors made, but once it's happened, what can we dofi"

• Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.