GRAND FORKS - About 20,000 absentee ballot applications mailed by North Dakota's Republican Party did not request information required by state law, but Secretary of State Al Jaeger wants county auditors to accept them anyway.

The applications, which were mailed Sept. 19, did not ask voters to supply their birth dates or driver's license identification numbers. Last year, the Legislature added those requirements to North Dakota law to make it easier for local election officials to check applications against a state voter database.

Jaeger, who is a Republican, asked county auditors last week to process the forms, saying prospective voters should not be punished for someone else's mistake. Auditors said Monday they were not rejecting the forms.

"The important thing is to get the ballot to the voter," Jaeger said. "The county auditors will bend over backwards to accommodate the voter."

In any case, the application "is not the ballot itself," Jaeger said. North Dakotans who mark an absentee ballot must sign a sworn statement that they are eligible to submit it, he said.

Jamie Selzler, director of North Dakota's Democratic Party, said Jaeger was selectively enforcing state law, and he questioned whether the GOP ballot forms should be accepted if they lacked needed information.

Democrats will be doing their own mailing of absentee ballot applications, Selzler said. "We're doing everything legally," he said.

Michael Bommarito, the state Republican director, said the omission was an oversight.

"We were sending (the form) back and forth to the printer for proofs, and the one that got to the printer didn't have that information," Bommarito said.

He estimated 20,000 forms were mailed. The application blank is part of a mailing that urges recipients to vote for Republican candidates.

Jaeger said the form was not given to his office beforehand for checking, which he said was the usual practice for GOP application mailings.

More than 20 county auditors who responded Monday to an Associated Press e-mail inquiry about the applications said they were processing them and double-checking the information when it was necessary.

A voter's birth date and driver's license number "are important identifiers for us in the poll book," said Les Korgel, the McLean County auditor.

"For voters who voted in the June primary election, we will have that information already," Korgel said. "New voters or voters who may not have voted for a number of years may not have that information in the (voter database). We hope to get that information when they return their ballots."

North Dakotans who used absentee ballots to vote in the June primary had the option of asking for a November ballot without completing a second application. Twenty of North Dakota's 53 counties are running their November elections mostly by mail, and already have sent absentee applications to residents who are on their voter rolls.

Jack Davidson, the Nelson County auditor, said the Republican forms create more work because the county has already sent its own applications to residents.

"When we receive an application from the Republicans, we have to check to see if it is a duplicate or not," Davidson said.

Debbie Nelson, the Grand Forks County auditor, said her office has had more difficulty working through applications collected from the University of North Dakota, some of which she believes were solicited at a UND football game.

Some of the applications had illegible handwriting and were filled out by voters who do not live in Grand Forks County, Nelson said.

"That has been a huge issue," Nelson said in an interview. "The Republican forms have been a small, minimal thing."

Paul Trauger, the Morton County auditor, said the GOP applications did not cause any difficulty if the voter was already listed in the state voter database.

"I think (Jaeger) is a Republican, so why didn't he communicate with his party?" Trauger said in an e-mail. "Or didn't his party pay attention to him?"