Gwinnett County is having a tallying issue that affects at least 80,000 absentee by mail ballots.
The ballots are counted in batches, and county spokesperson Joe Sorenson said about 3,200 batches have at least one ballot that can’t be read. The batches contain 50 sheets of paper, but Gwinnett’s ballot takes up two pages. Not every voter returns both pages.
Sorenson said with at least one ballot that can’t be read in each batch, the county’s elections board voted Tuesday night to scan and upload the batches as if each batch had already been checked and the ballot at issue OKed.
The ballot that can’t be read will likely be skipped in the upload, Sorenson said. He said this was the first time of the three elections since new voting machines were in use that the problem had occurred. The county is using new software to review ballots this time, he said.
The elections board still intends to go back through the batches and check the ballots that can’t be read to see if a voter’s intentions are clear, a process called adjudication. But Sorenson said the decision was made to upload results now with the knowledge that the vote totals would change as they’re looked at more closely.
“The goal is to have as many as possible tonight knowing there will be adjustments,” Sorenson said. “We want to get the best picture of what the vote is for Gwinnett.”
Sorenson said since it is unlikely the final vote will be determined tonight anyway, it makes sense for the counting to move forward with the understanding the numbers will change. He said 2,700 batches were tallied without an issue.
Through the end of the day Monday, voters in the county had returned 118,645 absentee ballots. More than 47,000 ballots that had been issued were outstanding Tuesday morning. Sorenson said some absentee ballots that arrived Tuesday still needed to be counted.
Additionally, the county will have to rescan ballots from one scanner used during the advance in person voting period. Ballots from Oct. 12 to 15 at Shorty Howell Park were uploaded to a corrupt card and will be scanned to a new card Wednesday.
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