Errant U.S. Ballots End Up in Denmark

New evidence that not every U.S. vote is properly counted surfacedthis weekend when a Danish couple found two absentee ballots from theU.S. presidential election in their mail.

Brian Kain, a 33-year-old accountant and sailing enthusiast,eagerly opened a large envelope when it arrived Saturday. He hadordered information about navigation charts from a company based inWashington state.

He assumed that two extra sealed yellow envelopes inside thepackage were ads and planned to throw them away until his wife,Helle, opened one to discover the absentee ballot of Steven H.Forrest of Bellevue, Wash.

The Kains didn't open the second envelope but assumed it also wasa ballot because both were marked with the words "Official ballot--do not delay."

They contacted the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen on Monday and wereasked to put the envelopes in the mail. Embassy spokeswoman LelaMargiou said embassy officials were waiting to receive the ballotsand had not yet decided what to do with them.

"It's kind of unusual," Margiou said, adding that the ballots"were not valid, were not meaningful, because counting in Washingtonstate has been completed."

Kain had ordered the information via the Internet from Tides EndLtd. of Washington. The envelope, postmarked Shaw Island, arrivedunsealed at the Kains' home near Odense, 105 miles west ofCopenhagen.

The Fyens Stiftstidende, the main local newspaper, said that itcontacted Forrest to tell him his ballot had landed in Denmark.Forrest said he did not understand how it could have been postmarkedin Shaw Island, 50 miles from where his wife mailed it in Bellevue.

Forrest told the newspaper he did not plan to pursue the matter."The vote is, I think, over," he was quoted as saying.

The U.S. presidential race remained undecided Monday with thestate of Florida's 25 electoral votes still at stake.