ATLANTA — Georgia's count is into its fourth day Friday, with all but a few thousand of the outstanding absentee ballots now processed throughout the state.
Then there will be more counting, of other kinds of ballots in other kinds of situations.
If it all seems confusing for it to be dragging out like this, it starts to make a lot more sense when you understand the context behind these ballots.
Here's what's still being counted in Georgia:
- Regular absentee ballots: This is the vast majority of what's been getting counted the last few days. These are the regular paper ballots that were sent to people who requested them, either to mail back in or drop off at a county drop-box. Counting them requires putting them through scanners, sorting through the ones that the scanner has issues with (see the next bullet point for more on that) and then submitting them to the state. It can be a slow process, and explains why it wasn't as simple as firing up the full results for Georgia on Election Night.
- Adjudicated ballots: These are the hand-marked absentee ballots, like those above, that were spat out by the scanners because of an issue with how the voter marked them. A Republican and Democrat then look at the ballot and determine what the voter was trying to do. Having to do this process over, and over, and over, is partly why the count has continued slowly along over the course of a few days.
- Provisional ballots: These are issued when a voter has an issue at the polls - for instance, they forgot their ID, or went to the wrong place. They get three days after the election to fix it with their county election office and have their vote counted. Provisional ballots are not included in counts until today's deadline passes, because not all of them will get fixed. Take Gwinnett County - we know they have about 1,000 provisional ballots, but all we know beyond that is more than 0 and fewer than 1,000 will wind up counting.
- "Cured" ballots: If your absentee ballot gets rejected - this often happens, for instance, if the signature on your ballot doesn't match the signature on your voter record - you also have three days after the election to get in contact with your county election office and resolve the issue, or "cure" it as the terminology goes. That deadline is the end of the day today, and you can check if your ballot was rejected here or by signing in to to your My Voter Page account.
- Military and overseas ballots: The deadline for these to arrive is the end of the day today as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. Some counties have already added the ones they have to their counts, while others are waiting until the end of today to submit them all together at once. The Secretary of State's Office estimated last night there were about 8,800 of these that had been requested but not yet received. We don't know how many will show up before the deadline tonight, but they could end up representing a significant vote total.