Local election officials see most number of absentee ballots ever

LEE COUNTY, Ga. – Endless phone calls, long lines and buckets of sanitizer, Georgia’s primaries were unprecedented. 

Although thousands showed up for in-person voting, with unique precautions and requirements in place, more people than ever opted for a different way of casting their vote.

“So many people requested absentee ballots by mail strictly because of the COVID-19 and I appreciate that I really do,” says Lee County Director of Elections and Voter Registration Veronica Johnson.

Johnson says the amount of mail in ballots has exceeded previous years.

“Typically here in Lee County, and I’ve been in this position for 20 years, we mail out around 700 ballots for a big election, we processed probably around 4,800-4,900 for this election so it was a very large uptick.”

Even though thousands mailed in or dropped off ballots, Johnson says some those same people decided to go vote in-person anyway,

“Which is causing a little bit of a clog because we’re having to cancel out the unreturned absentee ballot by mail and allowing them to vote in person instead.”

Although an unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots have been received, Johnson says many of them have already been processed.

“So An emergency state election board rule is actually enacted allowing counties to start opening and processing those paper ballots prior to today so actually in lee county we started processing those this past Saturday.”

So whether by mail, in-person Tuesday or during early voting  resident’s found a way to be heard this Election Day in the middle of a pandemic.