Election results in Georgia’s most populous county will be delayed after a plumbing incident on Tuesday.
A water pipe burst at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, where most of Atlanta is located, and is delaying the processing operations for absentee-by-mail by four hours, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. No ballots were affected.
“There was a pipe that burst in the room where we actually had ballots, thank goodness that none of those ballots were damaged,” said Dwight Brower, a member of the Fulton County elections.
However, the unforeseen plumbing problem will likely ruin the chances of a three-quarters count by 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. EST. “It’s going to be later than what we would like it to be,” said Ralph Jones, the elections manager in Fulton County.
Georgia is considered a must-win state for President Trump to be victorious over Joe Biden. As of around 8 p.m. on election night, the New York Times’s election needle for the state was “leaning Trump.”
Fulton County reportedly scanned and processed over 86,000 of the total 130,517 absentee ballots received, but the number does not include the ballots received on Election Day. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that more than 14,100 residents in the county voted as of 5 p.m., including just under 600 provisional ballots.
Mark Wingate, an elections board member, said he thinks the full results won’t be available until Friday.
