The Virginia Department of Elections has a software upgrade that could have prevented voters in precincts split into two or more election districts from receiving the wrong ballots, the Free Press has learned.

The finding comes at the same time the state Board of Elections, which oversees the department, has asked City of Richmond election officials to appear Jan. 8 before the state board to explain a series of problems that cropped up during the Nov. 3 election.

The issues include improperly programmed pollbooks that hampered voter check-ins, a failure to implement a change in state policy that affected Gov. Terry McAuliffe and, most notably, the distribution of the wrong ballot to voters in two city precincts.

As the Free Press reported in the Dec. 10-12 edition, Edward D. Adams and an unknown number of other Richmond voters ended up casting ballots in the wrong state Senate district because of the problem.

Mr. Adams told the Free Press that he protested to election officials at the polling place, but was forced to vote in the 9th Senate District instead of the 10th Senate District in which he lives. He said officials at the precinct insisted he lived in the 9th District and required him to accept the ballot for that district. He voted at Precinct 206 at the Dominion Place Apartments on Grace Street in the Fan District, one of six city precincts split between the two Senate districts.

Mr. Adams was not alone, according to a report state Elections Department Commissioner Edgardo Cortés and state Election Supervisor Gary Fox made to the board on Election Day as the board monitored election problems.

Mr. Fox told the board that the wrong ballots were distributed in Precinct 206 and Precinct 307 at Ginter Park Presbyterian Church. According to the report to the board, these were the only precincts in the state in which such a problem was reported.

Mr. Fox blamed the city for failing to program the electronic pollbooks at those precincts to account for the split districts. Pollbooks contain the names of registered voters and are used to check-in voters.

While check-in tables and pollbooks were separated according to district, the pollbooks contained names of all the registered voters in the precinct, not just those within a specific district, city Voter Registrar Kirk Showalter told the Free Press previously.

Two sources have told the Free Press about a software upgrade provided to the state election department by DemTech Services Inc., the vendor hired by the department to provide, maintain and upgrade current pollbooks. The department is required to provide the software to local election officials.

The software upgrade allows pollbooks to lock in the names of the registered voters in a district and to block the names of voters registered in a separate district.

If it had been installed, Mr. Adams would not have been able to vote in the 9th Senate District because his name would have been listed only in the 10th Senate District pollbook and locked out of the pollbook for the 9th District.

Ms. Showalter said she never received information that the state had software that would block voters in one district from being logged into the wrong district and given the wrong ballot.

Eugene Burton, voter technology coordinator for the state Department of Elections, did not respond to a request for comment about the software upgrade and its issuance to localities with split precincts.

During the November election, she said her office received complaints from some voters about receiving the wrong ballot and the problem later was stemmed, as Mr. Fox confirmed to the board. However, Ms. Showalter could not say how many wrong ballots were distributed and cast before the problem was resolved.

As all ballots are secret, Ms. Showalter said there was no way to determine which ballot voters like Mr. Adams cast. “We have plenty of remedies to ensure someone has the right ballot, but once a ballot is cast there is nothing to be done. State law provides no remedy at that point,” she said.

The state board also wants Ms. Showalter and the city’s three-member Electoral Board to explain other equipment problems that cropped up.

Mr. Cortés reported that the city initially could not check in voters at a number of precincts because pollbooks were programmed to seek an identification number, which election officials were not trained to enter.

Mr. Cortés said the board also wants Richmond to explain why election officials were still asking voters about discrepancies between the address listed on the pollbook and the address listed on their photo I.D.

Ms. Showalter said Gov. Terry McAuliffe was among those affected. She said he was not pleased when he was asked to explain why his driver’s license listed an address that was different from the Executive Mansion in Richmond’s Capitol Square where he now lives and is registered to vote on the pollbook.

Mr. Cortés said Ms. Showalter failed to implement a policy change in Richmond that would have prevented the problem.

During the administration of former Gov. Bob McDonnell, registrars and election officials had been told to question the voter when a photo ID contains a different address from the pollbook to determine which address is correct.

However, that policy was changed in August, Mr. Cortés said. Under the new policy, so long as a voter states the same address as that listed on the pollbook, election officials are not to question any discrepancy with the address listed on the photo ID.

Mr. Cortés said that change was included in the election information booklet distributed to local election officials in mid-August during preparations for the Nov. 3 election.

“I overlooked it,” Ms. Showalter acknowledged last week.

She said she was so caught up in obtaining new voting machines, “I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. I can say that the department did not highlight this policy change in the material they sent out. It would have been nice if they had. This was a pretty important change. But we’ll make sure this change is in effect for the next election.”