Despite concerns over absentee ballots being counted, polling places being safe, and voting machines accurately tallying votes, the August 11th runoff went relatively smoothly across the state. The difference was tangible from the messy June primary, which saw voters in line for hours, problems with machines, and delays and questions around absentee balloting.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says that his office will look to build off its success in August as it looks toward a November general election that promises to be several orders of magnitude bigger, and busier, than the runoff.
The runoff saw some 700,000 votes cast in total: with 300,000 of those cast via absentee ballots, 150,000 in early voting, and the other 250,000 in-person on election day. Raffensperger said Tuesday that he expects more than 5 million votes to be cast in November, with half of those coming in person on election day. Note that would be quite an increase from 2016, which saw 4.1 million votes in total.
Raffensperger praised elections officials and poll workers for the step up in operations; “County election officials deserve credit for the tremendous amount of work they’ve done this year as they’ve implemented a new voting system amid a pandemic. Any new system requires extensive training for poll workers. That’s difficult when workers can’t gather together in person and when many experienced workers backed out because they’re in an age group most vulnerable to the disease.”
Earlier this month the Secretary of State’s office announced the creation of an online absentee ballot request form portal, and last week it reopened the application process for counties to receive grant funding for absentee ballot drop boxes – that in addition to the 144 absentee boxes installed from the first round of grants.
The Secretary of State also continued his push to add poll workers – a task made more difficult by coronavirus but one Raffensperger says they are moving closer towards completing.
“We will continue to work towards our goal of recruiting 5,000 new poll workers. In fact, we have already been contacted by 4,000 people who want to help their neighbors by being poll workers and have passed those names on to the counties. We are continuing our efforts, along with the counties, to recruit a field tech for every polling location in the state.”
