MACON, Ga. — Bibb County missed the 5 p.m. deadline and certified the results from last Tuesday's election around 8 p.m.
Board of Elections Chairman Mike Kaplan says elections staff have been in touch with state officials about a problem with a software glitch that is largely to blame for delayed results, though a surge in absentee ballots slowed the early stages of the count.
According to Kaplan, elections staff got those certified results to state officials Friday night after the original deadline.
At least some of the factors that led to the delay could appear again in November's general election.
"It's a historical moment for Bibb County all the way around, from A to Z," said elections supervisor Jeanetta Watson earlier Friday.
A global pandemic, new voting machines, and an astronomical number of absentee ballots were just a few of the challenges facing the Bibb County Board of Elections.
Turnout was up compared to years past, driven in large part by those absentee ballots.
The Board of Elections leader said they're thrilled more people voted in this election, but admitted the absentee ballot surge slowed their counting procedures.
"I believe in (2016), which is the last time we had a mayor's race, we had about 1,100 absentee ballots for this race," said Kaplan. "In this election we had 18,450."
Kaplan says those extra ballots dragged out the counting process.
"Normally [by] Tuesday night, Wednesday, we're done counting," he said. "We were done about Friday, Saturday [this time] so [it took] about three or four extra days just to count all the absentee ballots."
Watson says problems with a software vendor compounded the problem, requiring election workers to manually record some ballots into a database that didn't work as expected.
"We had to, by hand, manually pull a report and I read and somebody keyed in the results," said Watson of the process for some ballots.
Kaplan said related software problems were responsible for the Friday evening delay in getting final certified results to state officials.
Both board leaders say more time to train poll workers with the new machines -- something COVID-19 disrupted -- should make the in-person voting go smoother in future elections and they hope the software vendor fixes the problem before Bibb County residents go to the polls again.
They say amid a global pandemic with no certain end date, some challenges could remain.
According to Kaplan and Watson, if absentee ballot levels stay high come November's general election, the reporting process of results could be delayed.
"As far as election night being the day that everybody knows the majority of the votes... I don't think that's going to be possible," said Watson.
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