TROY, N.Y. -- Barack Obama's been preaching change the whole campaign, but he probably wasn't talking about his last name.
Still, the Rensselaer County Board of Elections changed it on about 300 absentee ballots anyway.
Instead of electing "Barack Obama," voters were given the option of choosing "Barack Osama." The error raised eyebrows in the general public.
"It seems typical. Because after all, it's government. I don't trust any of them anyway," said a man after hearing of the problem.
"I think it'll feed into people's fears about Obama. That you know, it ties into the whole thing with his middle name being Hussein and this fear that he's secretly a terrorist," said another.
"I think that was intentional. It's obvious. Besides I support McCain. But you don't need dirty tricks," said a John McCain supporter.
And even though the "B" in Obama and "S" in Osama are nowhere near each other on the keyboard, the Board of Elections says it was an inadvertent typo, saying, "The error was included on only 300 out of more than 4,000 absentee ballots that will be mailed out this month. The Board of Elections acted quickly to correct the typographical error and regrets the error."
Teachers have been telling their students for years, "make sure you proofread your papers." But it looks like employees at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections were absent for those lessons because, as Ken Jubie reports, there's a pretty big typo in about 300 of their absentee ballots.
Still, the mishap has ironically raised a red flag with Obama supporters. Now they plan to work even harder to make sure all the I's are dotted, the T's are crossed and the "B" and "S" problems are eliminated before people cast their ballots.
"Our message is of change and making sure that every voter has the opportunity to vote and vote for the correct candidate that they choose to vote for," said Albany for Obama Chairman, Corey Ellis.
And while he does believe it was an honest mistake, Ellis hopes the Rensselaer County Board of Elections will try to figure out what caused the error to make sure it doesn't happen to future candidates, no matter what their names are.