Almost all of the more than 5,000 absentee ballots returned to the Garland County clerk's office had been counted with less than two hours before the polls closed Tuesday, the county's elections administrator said.
Eleven poll workers started scanning and tabulating ballots at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. Garland County Election Commission Chairman Gene Haley said shortly before 6 p.m. that most of the mail-in vote had been counted, save the 186 ballots received Monday, the 19 received Tuesday, the almost 200 marked as provisional and ballots from the postal service's Tuesday night delivery to the clerk's office.
Haley said the postal service planned to pull out ballots it collected from its late run Tuesday and deliver them to the clerk's office. Ballots received in the mail after Tuesday will not be counted, even if they were postmarked Tuesday or earlier. Nov. 13 is the deadline to receive ballots from voters living overseas.
Haley said the commission expected to count about 130 of the provisional absentee ballots. The voters who cast them provided copies of their ID or signed an affidavit swearing to their identity after the commission notified them by mail that their ballot had been marked provisional.
Nov. 9 is the deadline for provisional voters to cure their ballots by providing verification of registration or a copy of their ID.
With less than two hours before the polls closed at 7:30 p.m., more than 43,000 people had voted or returned absentee ballots to the clerk's office, beating the 2016 turnout of 41,173. Just over 63% of the county's more than 60,000 registered voters participated in the 2016 election.
Election Day turnout was light compared to 2016, with about 5,000 people going to the polls during the first 10 hours of voting compared to more than 12,000 four years ago.
"My guess was 10,000," Haley said of Tuesday's turnout. "That would've been about 70% turnout. That's probably not going to happen. If we get another 1,000, that would put us almost at 45,000. That would be 68%."
Voters 34 and younger accounted for more than a quarter of Tuesday's turnout, according to information tracked by the county's elections software. The group made up about 13% of the turnout during the 13 days of early voting. Voters 55 and older made up more than 43% of Tuesday's turnout and 60% of the early vote.
Piney Grove Methodist Church, 2963 Airport Road, was the busiest of the 16 Election Day vote centers during the first 10 hours of voting, with almost 700 voters checking in on the county's electronic poll books. LakePointe Church, 1343 Albert Pike Road, was second with 651 voter check-ins and the Hot Springs Mall was third with 455.
The county has used the vote center model for Election Day voting since the March 2016 preferential primaries and nonpartisan general election. It allows voters to choose their Election Day polling place, regardless of which precinct they're assigned to.
The commission removed nine vote centers from the county's list of polling sites in July out of concern about staffing 25 locations during a pandemic. It increased the number of early voting sites from four to seven, helping the county log more than 33,000 early votes.
This year's early vote topped 2016 by more than 22%. The absentee vote surpassed 2016 by about 27%.
