U.S. State Department announced Friday that DV Lottery results will be voided due to a computer glitch which affected the computerized election, reports the Washington Post online edition, stating that a new draw will take place in July.
According to BBC Online, more than 22,000 people have already been announced, erroneously, that they have been declared winners after the drawing on May 1.
State Department apologized for the error, stating that the new results will be announced in mid-July. “We sincerely regret any inconvenience or disappointment caused by this problem”, it said in a statement of the State Department.
Computer error caused computer systems to elect 90 percent of the winners from the persons who submitted their request in the first two days of registration period, which lasts 30 days.
Visa Lottery was established in 1994 to give a chance for legal immigration to people from developing countries or countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S.
State Department annually selects about 90,000 applicants, the number was later reduced to 50,000 after interviews, medical checks and examinations.
For 2011, there were filed more than 14 million requests for the 50,000 visas allocated.
David Donahue, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for consular services, said the error was discovered earlier this month. “The results are not valid, because there should be a fair and random selection of applicants, as required by U.S. law”, Donahue said, quoted by the Washington Post.
Sources from the State Department said that the programming error was corrected and the visa applicants don’t have to submit another set of forms for the new drawing.