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When it comes to fouling up in the voting booth, it’s hard to be original.

Imagine a way to mess up a ballot, and some hapless voter has already beaten you to it.

That’s what Guilford County’s Board of Elections had to wade through Friday on its way to arriving at the official vote totals for the 2008 election.

Although nearly a quarter-million residents cast ballots in the election, most of the board’s day was spent on the thousand or so voters who, to put it kindly, struggled with the process.

Luckily, that was all irrelevant.

President-elect Barack Obama still won the county easily, as did Bev Perdue, Kay Hagan, Howard Coble and every other candidate who had been announced as a winner.

Still, to finalize the totals, the board had to decide which ballots should count and which should not.

Take, for instance, the woman who voted early, then showed up again on Election Day to vote again.

“She decided she had voted all wrong and wanted to vote again to get it right,” said George Gilbert, the county’s elections director.

That was far from the only issue.

There was the voter who used a New Jersey form for a North Carolina registration (counted), the voters who sent in blank absentee ballots by accident then voted again at the polls (counted), the voters who said they didn’t vote for president the first time and asked to vote again (not a chance).

Some voters might have had more nefarious motives, including a few who voted twice and were referred to the District Attorney’s office for possible prosecution.

“We’ve got to stop folks from attempting to do that,” said board member Thaddeus Warren.

Voters weren’t the only ones making mistakes.

Seventy-eight voters used absentee ballots that were misprinted in such a way that the presidential vote wouldn’t scan. Those votes were counted Friday.

And one voter wound up successfully voting twice. The board was aware but was unable to connect her to the ballots she cast, so the extra vote could not be removed.

In the end, several hundred ballots were thrown out, but about 600 additional ballots were counted Friday.

And it turns out that voters actually did a little better this year than in previous elections. The number of questioned ballots was about half what it was in 2004, Gilbert said, thanks largely to the one-stop early voting program, which cut down on unregistered people trying to vote on Election Day.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com