LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — A computer malfunction at Gwinnett County’s elections office on Friday night forced the county to stop the vote counting and send everyone home while technicians fixed the problem.
County spokesperson Joe Sorenson said the vote counting will resume Saturday at 9 a.m. He said Gwinnett has mail-in ballots left to count and that said there are 965 provisional ballots left to research and process.
Sorenson said the county hopes to complete the counting Sunday.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Friday he hopes all 159 Georgia counties will finish their vote counts soon, but he said he could not forecast how soon.
Raffensperger said that when counting votes, it’s more important to be accurate, than fast, "to ensure every legal ballot is counted and no illegal ballots are counted.”
That’s his response to President Trump questioning whether Georgia’s elections processes are flawed, or even fraudulent - as if they might be stealing the election from him and his Georgia voters.
“If any member of the public raises legitimate concerns,” Raffensperger said, “we’ll investigate those. We are committed to doing anything and everything to maintaining trust in our electoral process here for every Georgian, regardless of partisan preference.”
And Gabriel Sterling with the Secretary of State’s office said his hope is that counties will certify their vote counts before their Nov. 13 deadline so that everyone will finally know the count and then move on to what’s likely next.
“So, we can have a little bit more time, some wiggle room, to deal with what we know will likely be a recount," he said.
“Everybody’s exhausted, it’s Friday," Sterling added with a smile. "There’s a Georgia game tomorrow. It’s kind of a big one. We got to focus on the really important things in this state, sometimes, in order to recover to be prepared for dealing with what is now a vital thing for this country.”
So, the state says it could be early next week when all the votes in Georgia are counted in a presidential race so close it will likely go to a recount.