New Process Slows Election Results

If you went in search of election results Tuesday night on the Cobb County election returns home page, you had to wait until 9 p.m., two hours after the polls closed, for any information.

It was close to 11 p.m. before all of the results were in.

When  had the SPLOST election a year ago, the first results came in by 7:30 p.m.

In an e-mail to Patch, Elections Director Janine Eveler says there is a logical, positive explanation:

Our processes have changed since March 2011; we no longer ask the poll workers to transmit results from the polls. Transmitting did provide some initial results sooner but it delayed the overall process by adding 42 additional steps to the poll closing procedures and because some polls made multiple unsuccessful transmission attempts before giving up and transporting the evidence to the election office.

Yesterday was our first county-wide election where the workers did not transmit and instead came directly with their evidence. We finished much sooner overall than we expected, sooner in fact than most of the other metro counties. We had more memory cards for this election than we did in March 2011 so we were very pleased with the end result. In July, our plan is to upload the advance in-person results before the polls come in so we can display something a little sooner.