COLUMBIA COUNTY, Ga. — Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger said the Senate runoff election was "running smoothly" across the state on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump tweeted about Dominion machines "not working" in reference to an issue in Columbia County that had been resolved this morning.
Voters in the Augusta-area district were forced to use paper ballots for a time early in the morning when systems had to be re-initiated due to a programming error in the security keys given to poll workers to start up the ballot scanners, Augusta NBC affiliate WRDW reported.
That issue had been resolved for a few hours by the time President Trump tweeted, "Dominion Machines are not working in certain Republican Strongholds for over an hour. Ballots are being left in lock boxes, hopefully they count them."
"And this issue in Columbia Co. was resolved hours ago and our office informed the public about it in real time. The votes of everyone will be protected and counted. Sorry you received old intel Mr. President," Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager in the Secretary of State's Office, tweeted in response.
In a release, Sec. Raffensperger said the issue in Columbia County had been resolved by 10 a.m.
"At no point did voting stop as voters continued casting ballots on emergency ballots, in accordance with the procedures set out by Georgia law," the release said.
Raffensperger said current wait times were now averaging just about one minute across the state. There were no wait times longer than 30 minutes reported anywhere.
“After wait times averaging just 2 minutes on November 3rd, Georgia’s election administration is hitting a new milestone for effectiveness and efficiency,” the secretary said in a statement. “I have always said that after every election, half the people will be happy and half will be disappointed, but everyone should be confident in the reliability of the results.”
