SARANAC LAKE — Some voters at the Harrietstown Town Hall had difficulties voting Tuesday.

Franklin County election commissioners Tracy Sparks (Republican) and Kelly Cox (Democratic) said around 50 voters had to vote by affidavit ballot because they were not properly registered to vote. This problem started because, according to Sparks and Cox, Department of Motor Vehicle employees were ripping the bottoms off voter registration forms at the Saranac Lake DMV and sending in just the top portion of the form with an address change.

Just because the residents got to vote by affidavit ballot does not mean they are guaranteed to have their votes counted. The two said it will be hard to rule on whether the affidavit ballots are valid because there is no paper evidence of whether the full registration forms were ever filled out. Cox and Sparks said the longer bottom portions of the registration forms may still be in storage at the DMV, but they also might be thrown out.

Another point of concern to some was that voters across Franklin County in the morning were requested to provide photo identification to vote. Cox and Sparks said this was a proactive response to a voter fraud case which took place in Malone in the Democratic primary in September, in which the son of a sheriff candidate who was not registered pressured poll workers to let him vote under someone else’s name.

They said poll workers were asking for ID from people they did not recognize until state Board of Elections officials called them around 8 a.m. and let them know they could not do that. After that, they said, the voting process in Franklin went back to normal.