Hall County elections officials are continuing to count absentee by mail ballot after a record number were received by the county.
At 11 p.m. Tuesday, about 94 percent of all Hall County votes has been counted. That included 53,755 ballots that were cast in-person during the three-week early voting period and 15,477 ballots cast at polling precincts on Election Day.
“We have had teams of people actively opening, sorting, reviewing and scanning absentee by mail ballots since Oct. 19,” Lori Wurtz, the county’s elections director, said. “We remain committed to finalizing the tabulation of absentee ballots by Wednesday afternoon in compliance with the deadlines outlined by the Secretary of State’s Office.”
County election officials have scanned and submitted 16,261 absentee by mail votes to the Georgia Secretary of State, leaving approximately 5,000 ballots left to scan and possibly review through the ballot review process before submitting to the state
Election Board Chairman Tom Smiley said in a news release that the elections office is committed to making sure every vote cast by a Hall County resident is counted correctly.
“I am confident in our elections officials and feel humbled by their willingness to work late into the night to deliver accurate election results that represent the desires of our community,” Smiley said.
In Gwinnett County, a glitch with vote-counting software is slowing the county of thousands of absentee ballots, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported Wednesday morning. The paper said ballots in Gwinnett may not be counted for a few days.
County spokesman Joe Sorenson told the newspaper the glitch caused about 3,200 batches of absentee ballots to get an error message saying they were pending adjudication. Each batch can include up to 50 ballots.
The software is used by other counties in the state, but Sorenson said Gwinnett appears to be the only county with the glitch. Sorenson said county officials will ask the vendor and the state to examine if the issues is caused by Spanish language requirements the county must follow.
Gwinnett received 118,645 absentee ballots as of the close of business on Monday. Absentee ballots did continue coming in on Tuesday, so the total number of absentee ballots affected is not yet known.
