Local run-off election voters are pouring in

On Tuesday, November 3, an election took place that, after the votes were in and the dust had settled, resulted in Georgia going blue in the presidential. However, the same elections also resulted in two key run-off elections for the state.

“Early voting has been steady, absentee by mail is getting a lot of ballots back, but all in all, it’s going smooth,” Assistant Supervisor for the Houston County Board of Elections Andy Holland commented.

“This one was always going to be hard to predict because of what’s on the ballot, and the hype around it. We were obviously expecting a high turnout compared to other run-offs we’ve done in the past, but this one has been fairly high. Between early voting and absentee by mail ballots, we’ve voted about 40 thousand people already,” Holland explained.

The final count for the general election in Houston County that took place in November had a total 74,823 voters ballots. “I don’t know if we’ll get quite up to the number that we did for the general election,” Holland added. “It’s hard to predict what the Election Day turnout will be after the first of the year, but obviously this is the highest turnout we’ve had for a run-off.”

“Two United States Senator races are going to draw a lot of people back out, whereas normally for a run-off, we’d see a turnout less than 10 … 15% sometimes. This one now, we’re already almost close to 40%,” Holland explained.

“Right now, we’ve got 25,000 that have voted early and another 15,000 and some change that have returned absentee ballots.”

This election has also gone without any disturbance or issues. In fact, according to Holland, the run-off “has gone a lot smoother.” He further said, “I think we’re just kind of learning, each and every election, a little bit more on how to improve the process. We’re still voting a lot of people everyday for early voting, but the lines and the wait times are down for this one. We’ve gotten a little bit more efficient on processing the absentee ballots,” Holland said.

Holland went on to state that, “Right now all the ballots we’ve received have been opened and scanned.” Early opening and early scanning are, according to Holland, allowed two weeks prior to the elections. They began this process last week. “That just gives us a chance to get the ballots opened and scanned ahead of Election Day, so hopefully, all that will be done by election night.”

Additionally, Holland explained that the board of elections is always doing what he called, “list maintenance,” which is a process where the information for registered voters is checked to make sure it is current.

“We’re always doing list maintenance, especially on people who have died, and people who have received felony convictions. From the general election day to today, people we have removed from the list have either passed away, received felony convictions, or have been transferred to a different county.”

Holland also verified, when asked about Donna Sant’s attempt to challenge the eligibility of over 5,000 voters in Houston County earlier in December, that there has been no systematic cancellation of voter registrations in Houston County.

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