JONES COUNTY, Ga. — Heading into election day, Georgia is one of many states with heavy early voting turnout. Across the state, counties use a uniform voting system.
There, voters can cast their vote electronically, then print their ballot afterwards but the vote counting process varies from county to county.
13WMAZ set out to explain what happens to your ballot before it's counted in the final tally.
Poll workers play a vital role in election procedure. Julia Reed, Jones County elections volunteer and poll manager began assisting with elections in 2020.
"I've been volunteering here since 2020. I came to vote early during the pandemic election and I saw the long lines. I'm a stay at home mom, kids are gone, so I decided if they needed help, I would just drop my purse behind the door and I started manning the scanner," Reed said.
Now, Reed is a poll manager and the county's election volunteer of the year working with Jones County Election Superintendent Marion Hatton. Hatton said her staff accounts for every ballot each night during the early voting window, even though a Fulton County Superior Judge struck down the state election board's hand count rule.
"The paper ballots are counted every day after early voting and then locked in a sealed container," Hatton said. "We do not tally any results."
Hatton said she wants to be clear: the votes aren't tallied until election night, adding her office counts the ballots by hands on a daily basis to ensure the number of paper ballots matches the electronic count. Reed and Hatton said it's an extra step to maintain election integrity.
"The ballots all day long are scanned into the machine and the ballot images and the counts are put onto this little memory card," Reed said.
Before voting started this month, Reed said a worker placed a memory card in each tabulator. The card holds an electronic record of every vote but paper ballots are removed each night and placed in secure containers. Reed also said they double-check machines for missing ballots.
"You always wanna check, we crawl in with a flashlight and we found ballots that would've gotten hung up," Reed said. "So we are very meticulous to make sure all our numbers are straight."
On election night, Hatton says their poll workers follow a structured system for ballot counting.
"They empty the ballot box, count them, put them in stacks of 50 put them in a container, seal that container and bring them in," Hatton said.
Hatton said absentee ballots are scanned and counted on election night but provisional ballots must be certified on the Friday after the election and the data on the SD cards is uploaded to the Secretary of State's office on election night.
As for the paper ballots, Hatton said they remain in the concealed containers until the Secretary of State's office calls for a risk limited audit. This is a post-election ballot canvassing process, where they'll randomly check a sample of paper ballots to support vote counts.
Hatton also said the results are certified the Monday following election day and they'll drop them off at a designated location the following Tuesday.