MACON, Ga. — Georgia's Secretary of State Office says they still have 14,097 ballots to count, according to their website last updated at 10:35 p.m. Thursday night.
Elections officials have told us for months that the ballot counting process would take a while, especially with record-breaking numbers in absentee ballots.
Totaling up mail-in votes isn't just happening in the state's big cities. Here in Central Georgia, Laurens, and Taylor counties were still counting Thursday evening.
Some of these absentee ballots in the state are having to go through the adjudication process, and rejected ballots are still remaining to be "cured." We spoke to election officials and took a closer look at what this all means.
An absentee ballot needs to be cured when it's flagged and rejected before the counting begins.
"When we receive a ballot back from a voter, an absentee ballot, and it doesn't have the signature on the oath, or it has a mismatched signature from what we have on file, we send them a letter and a cure affidavit," said Andy Holland with Houston County Board of Elections.
In Houston County, they have around 30 unresolved ballots that need to be cured, Holland said. In Bibb, they have 48, according to Kaplan.
Bibb County voter Ivy Cadle had his original absentee ballot rejected because he didn't sign it, but he said the process to make sure it was counted was easy.
"I provided them a copy of my driver's license and signed an affidavit saying I am who I actually am, and sent that information in the mail," Cadle said.
If your ballot was rejected, you have until Friday at 5 p.m. to "cure" it so your vote is counted. To check the status of your ballot, visit Georgia's My Voter Page on the Secretary of State's website.
It's also to important to note that if you filled out a provisional ballot because you did not have your ID with you, you have until Friday afternoon to bring your ID to the elections office so your ballot is counted.
Then, thousands of ballots across the state had--and are having to be-- adjudicated.
Bibb and Houston County have already finished adjudicating ballots. Around 800 absentee ballots were adjudicated in Houston County and almost 900 out of over 19,000 absentee ballots in Bibb County.
Ballots have to be adjudicated when a voter incorrectly fills out the ballot, or there's other errors that force the machine to reject it.
"You know if you don't fill in that little dot like they ask you to and you check it, 'X' it or circle the candidate's name, the ballot gets kicked out," said Bibb County Board of Elections Chairman Mike Kaplan.
So in those cases, Kaplan says there is a ballot review team.
The team is made up with both a Democrat and Republican poll watcher who work together to distinguish what the voter's intent was, Kaplan says. Then, the ballot is counted.
"The computer tells us which one and takes us to the problem screen, and it takes two to three to five minutes for every ballot so think about that," Kaplan said.
It's also to important to note that if you filled out a provisional ballot because you did not have your ID with you, you have until Friday afternoon to bring your ID to the elections office so your ballot is counted.