How the AJC will report election results

Eager Georgia voters swarmed polling places during early voting. Elections officials say overall turnout could hit 6 million.

Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC

Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC

Eager Georgia voters swarmed polling places during early voting. Elections officials say overall turnout could hit 6 million.

On Tuesday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will have reporters at polling places across metro Atlanta and will also monitor voting across the state. We will provide updates throughout the day on AJC.com and encourage Georgia voters to tell us about any problems they encounter. When polls close, we will share election results as they come in, along with reports on what the candidates are saying, and analysis from experts and our politics team.

State elections officials and independent observers caution that the expected heavy turnout and the unprecedented number of absentee ballots cast this year will cause delays in the reporting of results. Elections officials say more than 6 million Georgians may vote this year and as many as 1.5 million will do so by mail. It takes time to process and count all those ballots.

As a result, the AJC will likely be slower to declare winners. During the primary, which had a record number of Georgians voting by mail, the final outcome of several close races did not become clear for days.

We will review calls made by The Associated Press and the national networks before sharing them with our readers.

You may notice that our election results pages no longer include “precincts counted.” With the high number of absentee ballots expected this year, the number of precincts counted no longer accurately represents how many votes have actually been counted.

You can read more about that change here.