CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Mecklenburg County election officials say some absentee ballots sent in by mail for Tuesday's primary were initially counted twice.

County Elections Director Michael Dickerson said the problem was discovered during a Thursday morning audit. He said fixing the mistake didn't change the outcome of the two races affected.

Dickerson said the double-counting apparently occurred as curbside vote totals were being downloaded to filing software. He said in trying to save the curbside numbers to a disk, some absentee numbers were added by accident.

Dickerson said the mistake altered one race by a tenth of a percentage point, while another race changed by six-tenths of a point.