JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Some absentee voters in rural northwest Missouri are choosing between Republican Jean Carnahan and Democrat Jim Talent in a U.S. Senate race.

Oops! Make that DEMOCRAT Jean Carnahan and REPUBLICAN Jim Talent.

The party affiliation of the two Senate candidates was reversed on thousands of ballots printed for Holt County, officials confirmed Monday.

But little harm may have been done.

From the start of absentee voting Sept. 24 through Monday, just 16 voters had received the incorrect ballots, said Holt County Clerk Sue Kneale.

After consulting with the secretary of state's office, the county decided to give those voters two options. They could send back the wrong ballot, request a corrected one and cast a new vote.

Or, they could vote on the incorrect ballot, notify the clerk of their true intentions, and leave it to the clerk's office to correct the ballot if needed.

"This is an interesting situation, to say the least," said Spence Jackson, spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Matt Blunt. "It's a very rare occurrence."

Kneale said county election authorities had sent the correct party identifications to its printing contractor, Henry M. Adkins and Son Printing of Clinton.

An error occurred in the typesetting, said Bill Vanderburg, the company's vice president of sales. The company also prints ballots for 54 other Missouri counties and about 100 counties total in the Midwest. He said no other problems had been reported.

The printing company plans to cover the roughly $1,500 cost for a new batch of ballots, Vanderburg said. Holt County, which borders Kansas and Nebraska, has 4,425 registered voters.

Kneale said she didn't expect the correctable error to affect the results.

"This is a minor glitch," she said. "The course of elections rarely runs entirely smoothly."