How election night went, according to Richmond County Board of Elections
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - On Tuesday, Georgia officials were preparing to count votes to have results by the end of the night.
We spoke with the Richmond County Board of Elections on how they thought the night went.
Even with expanded early voting in Richmond County, turnout was not what they thought it would be.
If you ask Richmond County Board of Elections Executive Director Travis Doss about the 2024 general election he will tell you it was smooth sailing.
“What worked really well is we had the four advanced voting sites that were open the entire three weeks, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p..m.,” said Doss.“We had that extra hour that we did not have in 2020, we had two Saturdays. We had a Sunday.”
He believes Georgia’s new law requiring absentee ballots to be counted by 8 p.m., helped things flow.
A look behind Trump’s decisive victory in a deeply divided nation
Donald Trump exposed a weakness in the Democratic base and beat back concerns about him being the first U.S. president with a felony conviction.
“The big difference last night than 2020 was that we had most of our absentee and our advanced early voting stuff ready to go by 7 p.m., so we had all of that tabulated and were able to that pretty quickly,” he said.
Doss tells us however, he didn’t see the turnout he hoped for.
“I really did expect we would have a higher turnout this time than what we had in 2020, and I don’t know what the cause of that might be,” said Doss. “I don’t know if it was the weather. I don’t know if we’re still suffering a little bit of voter fatigue because of the elections this year. I really was hopeful first thing in the morning, when we did see such a high early voting turnout that we would have more people turn out on election day.”
While there were no major hiccups, Doss says no matter how hard they try, there will always be precinct confusion.
“I was talking to marshalls deputies this morning, and they said over 180 people came to the municipal building yesterday to vote,” said Doss. “They said that they had to turn away over 180 people that showed up here thinking they could vote here because this was an early voting location. I don’t know how to enforce that message, because that’s what we say all the time.”
Here’s a look at Trump’s sweeping plans for 2nd istration
Donald Trump has outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade.
Doss says he knows there is always room for improvement.
He says one thing he’d like to see in future elections is voting centers across the county so you don’t have to go to your assigned precinct.
What he is most excited about is the unofficial results seem to show there won’t be any local runoffs.
That’s a sigh of relief so they don’t have to do it all over again.
Copyright 2024 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.
