Wake County Board of Elections member Angela Hawkins and Board Chairwoman Erica Porter confer. (Photo: Lynn Bonner)
Red and yellow containers sat at the end edge of the Wake County Board of Elections meeting table on Wednesday as members prepared to sift through their contents as part of the painstaking work of reviewing voter information that accompanied absentee ballots.
Thousands of ballots had no problems and were approved in bulk. But some absentee ballots arrived initially without a voter signature. Some were sent without all the witness information included. Some didn’t have the proper notary seals.
Wake County Board of Elections members passed from hand to hand 109 absentee ballots in their envelopes so they could review information voters had sent the county office to correct problems in order for their ballots to count.
One hundred and nine ballots down, nearly 5,000 more to go. And that was just for the Wednesday meeting that ran for more than six hours. On Thursday, the Wake board will consider about 6,000 provisional ballots.