Ha. If this was on purpose, New York state would be the MOST idiotic place to try it. Go for somewhere where it could actually change the outcome next time!

Zero percent chance that's an innocent mistake, and it should take about an hour tops to find the fucker who did it. He should be fired and prosecuted under Federal statutes for fucking with an election.

Fortunately, NY is not in doubt.

@2

Amen.

Yeah, the 's' and the 'b' keys are not exactly close on a keyboard. I'd say that was intentional. And I bet there's going to be more of that.

I blame John McVeigh... I mean McCain. Shit, I'm always doing that.

They also said in the article that this made it through ... THREE ... rounds of proofreaders. That's the most head-slapping part of the whole shebang.

I predict new levels of desperation in this year's round of election fraud. Fnarf's right, the chances of this being an innocent mistake are nil.

mebbe innocent mebbe not

this county is across the hudson river from Albany and is part of the Albany Schenectady Troy area, probably a more D area. it's more educated, higher income than the average rural NY areas.

the bd of elections has two commissioners one D one R and the staff is equally divided.

many folks including pro Obama pols and news folks have made the same mistake.....

Why would you risk your job just so Obama can win all of NY's electoral votes by a slightly smaller majority?

Protest vote indeed. Well played, soon-to-be-fired-and-prosecuted county elections official!

Has anyone seen any kind of typo or misspelling on a ballot? I don't think I ever have, which is kind of astounding in itself, but definitely speaks against this being a mistake.

I agree with most of the other commenters. If this had happened in a swing state, it might be evidence of "The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy." As it is, any idiots who vote according to that aren't going to change anything.

Typo. I know I've been guilty of some bizarre ones in the past. But there's not excuse for making any document to do with this election without first doing a find and replace of Osama-->Obama.

Does that ballot also list John McCain twice?!?! "Independence electors for John McCain" http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/10/new-york-countys-ballots-print-%E2%80%98barack-osama%E2%80%99/

@14,

That's normal in New York state. Candidates can be listed under any number of different parties. In 2000, Hillary was listed under the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party. Only one vote per candidate is counted, no matter how many times they appear on the ballot.

Totally intentional.

But they'll pretend it was a mistake.

Mixup? B.S.

I'm going to go with purposeful -- but not an attempt to sway anyone.

This has the hallmarks of an internal joke that's correction was overlooked before deadline.