Floyd certifies election results
Local officials say 116 of the 173 provisional ballots cast were accepted.
Today is the deadline for the state to certify election results — unless a judge bumps it back to Wednesday — but there are no ballot disputes pending locally.
Floyd County Elections Board Chair Steve Miller said Monday there were 173 provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 6 general election, compared to 16 during the May primaries. Clerks spent the week reviewing the voters’ eligibility and, in the end, 116 of them passed muster.
Miller said a few provisional voters never returned with their required identification, and some weren’t registered by the Oct. 9 deadline to vote in this election. Most of the 57 rejected ballots, however, were from voters registered in another county.
“There were people trying to vote anywhere in the state,” he said. “You can’t do that, because we don’t have the same ballots.”
Voters who tried to cast ballots in the wrong county precincts on Election Day had the option of going to the correct location or voting provisional. Those ballots were accepted as long as the voter was on the county rolls, Election Board member Mardi Haynes Jackson said, but any votes they cast in races outside their district were not counted.
“This was one of the smoothest elections we’ve had,” she noted. “Especially when you look at the number of people who voted.”
Floyd County sent its certified election results to the Georgia secretary of state’s office Friday. While the outcome didn’t change in any race, the totals shifted a bit.
Turnout increased to 58.01 percent from 57.79 percent, with 30,441 ballots cast out of a possible 52,475 registered voters.
The secretary of state’s website shows a slight discrepancy — 30,440 votes out of 52,469 registered — but the vote totals in each race appeared to match the county-certified numbers. State offices were closed Monday in observance of Veterans Day and a call to the agency was not returned.
Not every provisional voter voted in every race.
Floyd County’s provisionals added 113 more votes in the governor’s contest that was still playing out late Monday between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams. Kemp got 79 of them, Abrams got 32 and Libertarian candidate Ted Metz received two.
Abrams, who’s hoping to force a runoff, filed a federal lawsuit Sunday asking for a one-day delay in the certification deadline due to alleged problems in populous Gwinnett and DeKalb counties.
Unofficial returns show Kemp with 50.3 percent of nearly 4 million total ballots, or a 58,875-vote margin over Abrams that has narrowed slightly as votes were counted. Libertarian Ted Metz received about 37,000 votes in the three-way contest.
Kemp’s lead is enough for an outright victory if totals remain the same, but it’s a tight race considering the large, 61 percent turnout statewide.
A Dec. 4 runoff is certain in the secretary of state race between Republican Brad Raffensperger and Democrat John Barrow, where Libertarian Smythe Duvall took more than 2 percent of the vote. In Georgia, candidates must have more than 50 percent to win outright.
Provisional ballots from Floyd County added 110 more votes to the total in that race: 76 for Raffensperger, 32 for Barrow and 2 for Duval.
The Public Service Commission Post 3 race is also headed to a runoff. Floyd County’s certified results boosted the total by 107 votes cast but the share remained about the same: 70 more for Republican Chuck Eaton, 33 more for Democrat Lindy Miller and four more for Libertarian Ryan Graham.
The races for insurance commissioner and Public Service Commission Post 5 also were too close to call Monday night and could be eligible for runoffs.
Voters registered by Oct. 9 are eligible to vote in the runoffs, even if they didn’t vote in the general election.