While many of the larger, urban counties are already reporting a significant amount of votes, Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer in the office of the Georgia Secretary of State, said they are still waiting for several rural counties to report their tallies.
“The four largest most populous counties which kinda can swing the vote one way or the other by themselves are really coming in pretty quick,” he told CNN Tuesday, but added that the race is so close there, the smaller counties really matter.
“But it’s so close, you know, those counties that have 10,000 votes, 4,000 votes — and they’re going to go 80% for Walker. They’re going to keep on coming in,” he added.
In order to upload votes, poll workers often have to drive through the county to deliver tallies, sometimes on memory cards, Sterling said, pointing to Fulton County as an example, which is about 90 miles long.
“We had a car accident with one car carrying one of the cards,” he told CNN. He said both workers are okay and they were able to retrieve the voting information and get it to a county headquarters.
“This is the kind of stuff that happens on Election Day because you have thousands of people out there doing their jobs,” Sterling said.
He said the state saw record turnout today — including a record number of people both voting in-person and by absentee ballots in a runoff election.
But there is still many more ballots to count, saying, “It’s going to be a long night”
