Officials with the State Board of Elections confirmed Tuesday that they are aware of the complaint - a lawyer for the state GOP wrote to state election Secretary Nancy Rodrigues about the matter - but declined comment pending further investigation.
Norfolk deputy registrar John Merkel, who handles Norfolk's absentee ballots, said the state system has multiple safeguards to ensure that each absentee voter is counted just once.
Absentee ballot activity is logged into the state voter registration computer system. On every voter's record, there are fields for registrars to log when a voter requested an absentee ballot and for what reason, when a ballot was sent, and when a completed ballot was returned, Merkel said.
In Norfolk, returned ballots are filed by precinct and then alphabetically within the precinct. Duplicates would be obvious, he said.
"I have to account for every ballot I send out by number," Merkel said. Norfolk does not count the ballots until Election Day, when the paper ballots are checked against a printed list of absentee voters and then tabulated, he added.
The complaint by Jeff Frederick comes amid mounting concern in both parties, bolstered by several independent studies, that dramatic growth in voter registration and intense voter interest in the presidential campaign could produce a huge turnout and an array of problems across the state on Election Day.
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