ATLANTA — Georgia’s general primary election is just one week away, and undoubtedly it will be critical that every vote counts.
But, as 11Alive continues to investigate mail delays across the Peach state, we also decided to run our own newsroom experiment to see how long it would take to get absentee ballots by mail.
We used nine volunteer voters from our newsroom, who live in Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties and asked each volunteer to request absentee ballots on the same date: April 3.
From there, they logged the process, using communication from elections officials as well as BallotTrax, the online tracking tool allowing voters to monitor the status of their absentee ballots through the postal service.
What we found
Through the process, we found it took on average 27 days for ballots to arrive, starting from the April 3 date requested. Based on available data from either online tracking or county emails, we discovered ballots spent one to eight days moving through the mail system before arriving to voters.
Such numbers, however, only represent half the process for those voting absentee in Georgia. Once received, voters must properly fill out their absentee ballot and from there have three options:
1. Mail it back;
2. Drop it in an official absentee drop box; or
3. Drop it off in-person at their county elections office.
According to the latest data from Georgia’s Secretary of State’s office, 62,515 ballots have been requested thus far. Of those, 24,597 have been accepted.
RELATED: Georgia Secretary of State urges absentee voters to be proactive as USPS mail delays persist
When it comes to voters concerned about mail delays, the Secretary of State’s office told 11Alive that “Voters can securely track the status of their absentee ballot through the Secretary’s My Voter Page or sign up for BallotTrax.com.”
“Voters may also take advantage of up to 19 days of in person early voting and on election day,” the statement reads. “If the voter receives their ballot, but has concerns about timely delivery to the elections office, they may deposit the ballot into a drop box or in person at the elections office.”
Mail delays in metro Atlanta persist
11Alive has been tracking on-time rates for First Class mail for weeks. Operations are slowly improving, but the on-time rate for all First Class mail still remains below 70%. Meanwhile, only 44% of single-piece letters are being processed on time. Yet, election mail is in its own category.
According to the USPS Service dashboard, election mail is delivering 72% on time, according to the latest data available, but the agency’s website also posts a disclaimer:
"In some cases, processing scores are derived from limited volumes of mail, and therefore such scores would be of limited value in providing analytical insight into service performance. These data do not reflect official election information. Please visit Election Mail - about.usps.com to learn more about the Postal Service’s full commitment to the secure and timely delivery of the nation’s Election Mail."
Another disclaimer adds the following:
"These processing scores are inherently limited because some Election Mail (particularly ballot mail) bypasses the processing network entirely to speed delivery and is not captured in measurement; also, the Postal Service can measure only the subset of Election Mail and Political Mail with trackable barcodes."
11Alive has reached out to USPS to clarify such metrics but has not yet received a response.