As early voting continues in Athens, state Election Board rules on absentee ballots

Athens hits today the middle of the first of three weeks of early voting in advance of state and local elections that are scheduled for June 9: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says there is still time to vote absentee.

From Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Election officials can begin opening absentee ballots eight days before Georgia’s June 9 primary, according to a State Election Board rule approved Monday to deal with a deluge of mailed-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic.

The board voted unanimously to pass the emergency rule, which will help election officials handle record numbers of absentee ballots. In previous elections, absentee ballots couldn't be processed until election day.

Even though ballots can be opened in advance, election results in some races might not be known for several days after the primary because of the time needed to count absentee ballots.

It will take much longer to scan and count absentee ballots than it would on Georgia's new in-person voting system, which combines touchscreens and printed-out paper ballots.

So far, over 1.4 million voters have requested absentee ballots. Polls opened Monday for three weeks of in-person early voting.

“For this once-in-a-lifetime unprecedented emergency, this regulation painstakingly attempts to balance transparency and security,” State Election Board member Matt Mashburn said during the meeting held via teleconference.

The rule authorizes county election workers to open and scan absentee ballots in advance, but those votes can’t be counted until polls close at 7 p.m. June 9. Until then, votes will be stored in the memory of optical scanning computers, the same as votes cast in person during early voting.

So many people are planning to vote by mail as a way to avoid human contact at polling places. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the chairman of the State Election Board, encouraged absentee voting by sending ballot request forms to the state's 6.9 million active voters.