With all-new voting equipment, with absentee voting strongly encouraged because of a pandemic and combining two previously postponed primaries, Tuesday’s election always had the possibility of problems.
Bulloch County wasn’t one of the places in Georgia where voting hours had to be extended past the standard closing time of 7 p.m. Tuesday. But, after the polls closed at the normal time, the vote count here was something else. Poll workers and staff members involved in the work at the Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration office went home with the counting still incomplete at around 3 a.m. Wednesday.
Then, elections office personnel started again at 8 a.m. One of the causes of delay was counting all the absentee ballots, said county Elections Supervisor Patricia Lanier Jones.
“We had over 7,000 absentees, so we’re still working on it,” she said late Wednesday morning.
After 5 p.m., she released a more nearly complete, but still partially incomplete and unofficial, 63-page set of results. Still to be evaluated and counted were roughly 100-125 provisional ballots that could change some results in close races, she said.
Even that estimate of provisional ballots was a guess until officials do more paperwork, she said. Provisional ballots result when people attempt to vote who are registered in the county but go to the wrong voting place or do not have an accepted I.D.
Winners & runoffs
Most winners and runoffs are certain, although the provisional ballots could shift the outcome of at least one very close school board race. Two-candidate runoffs are required in Georgia elections when no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, and any runoffs from Tuesday’s election will conclude with precinct voting Aug. 11.
In the race for Bulloch County State Court solicitor-general, Catherine Sumner Findley, with 3,709 votes or 41.1%, and Mark A. Lanier, with 2,886 votes, or 32%, advance to the runoff. Ben Edwards placed third, with 2,431 votes, 26.9%.
Also headed to a runoff are Board of Education District 7 incumbent Heather Mims, who received 738 votes, or 38.6%, and challenger Lisa Deloach, with 607 votes, or 31.8%. Joe Glisson placed third, with 565 votes.
But in Board of Education District 1, with no incumbent running, the race became so close that provisional ballots could decide it. Glenn Womack had 1,319 votes to Ryan Brannen’s 1,308 votes, a difference of 11.
In BOE District 3, incumbent Stuart Tedders held on his seat, defeating Patrice Ellison, 447 votes to 356, as of Wednesday’s update.
In BOE District 8, incumbent Maurice Hill beat Keisha Howard, 981 votes to 324.
In the race for tax commissioner, Leslie Deal Akins will succeed her father James Deal, defeating Jeanie Rushing Gay, 7,018 votes to 2,302.
Sheriff Noel Brown easily defeated challenger Keith Howard, 8,129 votes to 1,472 in the Republican primary. Brown will face Democrat Rey Rodriguez in November. These numbers have been updated based on Wednesday’s late-afternoon report.
In County Commission District 2A, incumbent Curt Deal will retain his seat, with 5,158 votes to 2,973 for Chris Akins.
In the Democratic primary for Bulloch County Coroner, Jonathan Paine outpolled Michelle Fiorelli Rupar, 2,796 votes to 1,543. Paine will face incumbent Republican Jake Futch in November.
In the 12th District Democratic primary election for U.S. Congress, Liz Johnson of Bulloch County defeated Dan Steiner of Augusta. With 84.2% of precincts in the district reporting, Johnson had captured 44,669 votes to Steiner’s 8,792 and will face incumbent Republican Rick Allen in November.
Why so late?
For the number of absentee ballots, Jones later gave a slightly more precise estimate of 7,200. So, almost half of the total count of 14,862 ballots cast in Bulloch County in this election were hand-marked ballots.
These had to be fed into different electronic scanners than the ones that counted machine-marked ballots Tuesday at the precincts and during the three weeks of in-person early voting.
More than 1,800 Bulloch residents had voted early in-person.
With 44,201 voters registered, the total turnout of 33.85% was good for a primary, Jones agreed, but only a little better than the 32.65% turnout in the May 2016 primary.
Another cause of delays during the initial count Tuesday night was that some poll workers or managers forgot to bring data cards from some of the new machines to the central office. Bulloch County has 16 voting precincts, some far from the elections headquarters.
“Fair (Road), Brooklet and Sinkhole had to go back and pick something up that we needed,” Jones had said when asked which precincts were last to report.
Many poll workers are senior citizens, and protecting them from COVID-19 was a reason given for the earlier election postponements. Earlier this spring, Jones had also expressed concerns about poll workers showing up. She said there were “enough” of them Tuesday, around 100 working in Bulloch County, but that she could have used a few more.
Across Georgia, several precincts stayed open past 7 p.m. Tuesday, some under judges’ orders, because of voting delays or long lines at the polls. The last to close was a precinct in DeKalb County that stayed open to 10:10 p.m., a state elections official said Tuesday evening.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Secretary of State’s election results website showed 81.46% of precincts reporting in statewide races.