US Election Update: Equipment Problems Cause Delay of Absentee Ballot Count in Georgia

After having continuous problems with some of the new election machinery in Georgia, the counting of absentee ballots in a crucial Atlanta suburb was held up early on Wednesday, according to a report.

As of 5 a.m. in the state, Democrat representative Joe Biden found himself 2.2 percent-point under current President Donald Trump, who holds the lead.

Based on the report, the problem which took place in Gwinnett County has affected an estimated 80,000 mailed-in absentee ballots, wherein some of it could not be read by the scanners in the county, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Joe Sorenson, the spokesperson of the county, was the one who shared the problems that they had encountered to the source but refused to answer when asked by other members of the media.

All of the counties in Georgia are using voting systems that are made by the company named Dominion.

The scanner or the system which caused problems in Gwinnett was a batch scanner that was made by Dominion, which is used to quickly scan large groups of absentee ballots.

The county spokesperson shared with the source that the batch scanner in Gwinnett failed to read at least one ballot in every 3,200 batches of ballots, and the county will be rescanning the ballots and then manually review them to ensure an accurate count.

According to POLITICO, the snag emerged just hours after a different technological glitch occurred on Tuesday morning, which halted voting in the counties of Morgan and Spalding in Georgia.

Election supervisor at the Spalding County Board of Elections, Marcia Ridley, shared in an interview that the problem in her area was due to the electronic poll books.

Aside from the voting machines, which are produced by Dominion, the state of Georgia also uses electronic poll books that are made by the company knowInk.

The state of Georgia also used both of the systems coming from Dominion and KnowInk for the first time this year as they replaced their old electronic voting system, which they have been using for the last 20 years.

Ridley also mentioned that one of the vendors uploaded an update to her county's poll books the night before the election without even notifying her.

She also added that the said update caused a glitch, which prevented the poll books from being used. The poll books by KnowInk are used to sign in voters, and it is also used to program smart cards that are inserted into the voting machines made by Dominion in order to display a digital ballot onscreen for the voters.

Ridley also mentioned that it is something that they do not normally do as she has not seen any update made a day prior to the election day and shared that she does not have any idea as to what the update contained or what it was all about.

On Tuesday morning, neither of the two companies answered any request for comments regarding the problems.

Aside from the said counties in Georgia, Fulton, which includes the majority of Atlanta, also experienced a delay in processing all absentee ballots after a pipe burst in a room where the ballots are being counted, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.