The votes in Shelby County came late and suddenly on election night, with the early vote count an hour after the polls closed locally followed about an hour later by a separate absentee count.

The absentee vote count showed a total of 16,584 ballots cast in the countywide race for General Sessions Court Clerk.

With that, the combined count with 158 of the 166 election day precincts countywide followed shortly before 10 p.m.

The combined results showed Democratic nominee and former Memphis City Council member Joe Brown winning the race for General Sessions Court Clerk, the only countywide race on the Shelby County ballot.

Former City Council member and Democratic nominee Joe Brown took the Shelby County early vote by a wide margin in his bid to become the county’s next General Sessions Court Clerk in the first Thursday, Aug. 6, election results.

The early vote totals, excluding the absentee vote, shows Brown winning handily over former Probate Court Clerk and Republican nominee Paul Boyd with election day results and the absentee results still to come.

Brown had 41,305 in the early vote compared to 25,185 for Boyd.

In other races, incumbent Shelby County Schools board member Scott McCormick lost the early vote to challenger Sheleah Harris in the race for the District 5 school board seat.

Voting was a family affair at Arlington United Methodist Church late Thursday afternoon, where Jack Hatcher, 20, voted for the first time with parents Laura and Jeff Hatcher.

“It was definitely different. Obviously with the COVID stuff, it was an interesting first time. But I think even despite that, it was still fun,” Jack said.

He is a student at the University of Memphis but drove five hours from an internship in Bentonville, Arkansas, to vote with his family.

”I insisted that he come. He really literally just drove in and we waited on him to come because it’s important to me that we vote. We can’t complain if we don’t vote,” Laura Hatcher said.

The stream of masked voters at the church was steady.

Businesses have a right to ask customers to wear mask, as does his employer, FedEx, Pat Walker said.

”I don’t think there’s a problem at all,” Walker said. “I think it’s going really well.” 

The Bartlett Post Office is taking completed absentee ballots Thursday afternoon for same-day delivery to the Shelby County Election Commission, according to Election Commission officials.

The facility at 2966 Elmore Park Road is accepting the ballots until 5 p.m. and will take the mail-in ballots directly to the commission. The deadline to get the mail-in ballots to the commission is the closing of the polls at 7 p.m., and by state law the ballots cannot be delivered in person.

The late afternoon vote is still to come, but it looks like the healthy early voter turnout will simply move around the numbers and not significantly change the totals in Thursday’s stage-setter for the bigger election in November.

The presidential general election on the November ballot is the most popular consistently by voter turnout in Shelby County politics.

It is the only election cycle that consistently turns out more than half of the voters in the county.

The November 2018 midterm general election just made it across the 50% barrier, making it the first election that is not the presidential general election to draw a majority of Shelby County voters since 1994.

At Memphis Botanic Garden, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. George Flinn greeted the few voters there Thursday and predicted he would score a big upset over Bill Hagerty, who has President Trump’s endorsement, and Manny Sethi.

“The two other candidates are fighting each other and lobbing all kinds of mud balls and everything. I think people want somebody who will actually get out there and work,” Flinn said. “That’s not the way to get anything done.”

Flinn said he is also a supporter of Trump but will stand up to the president when he’s wrong.

”I’m with him as long as he’s espousing Tennessee conservative values,” Flinn said.

With plenty of sunshine and hand sanitizer, election day in Shelby County appeared to be going slowly and quietly Thursday, Aug. 6.

The Shelby County Election Commission reported about 6,000 election day voters as of 10 a.m., ahead of the expected afternoon rush hour crowd.

Gauging turnout in the pandemic will be difficult because of how it has changed habits.

Then there is the impact of absentee balloting.

Colonial Park United Methodist Church, at Park and Estate in East Memphis, had no line.

The site was extremely clean and the workers friendly.

Everyone was wearing a mask, and the entire voting process involved no contact.

Jeff Johnston has been voting for 50 years, but he had several first-time experiences in this year’s election.

Johnston, 68, who was manning the exit desk at the Greenlaw Community Center polling place, offered to be a poll worker for the first time after he learned that the coronavirus had cut back on the supply of volunteers for the job.

“I live Downtown so it was easy to get here,” he said. 

He also voted by mail for the first time this year, and was able to verify that his ballot counted when he arrived to work at the center in the Uptown neighborhood north of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Davis Community Center on Spottswood had no line for voting about 9:30 Thursday morning.

Six cars were in the parking lot, and three voters were inside.

The precinct included social distancing markers on the floor, hand sanitizer at the room entrance, poll workers wearing both face masks and gloves, plastic barriers in front of the poll workers, a single-use pen for voters to use and popsicle sticks to use at the voting booth instead of fingers.

Outside, people were campaigning for Anya Parker and Catrina Smith, both running for the District 90 state House seat.

Polling places across Shelby County are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

If you voted during the 14-day early voting period that ended this past Saturday or applied to vote absentee under the new pandemic circumstances, got your absentee ballot, mailed it in and you know it’s been received -- do not go to the polls Thursday. You’ve already voted and voting twice is a crime.

You can check to see if your completed absentee ballot was received at GoVoteTN.com, the state’s website, which has a ballot tracking feature. However, there is a lag of day in posting new ballots received.

The deadline for your absentee ballot to be in the hands of the Election Commission to be counted is at 7 p.m. Thursday – when the election day polls close. But you cannot deliver it in person. It has to be mailed or delivered by a service like FedEx or UPS. So for conventional mail, same-day delivery is probably out of the question. If you can get same-day delivery from a private carrier, that could work.

Things were running pretty well Thursday morning at the SportsCom polling location in Murfreesboro, but with great caution.

By 9:30, only about five people had shown up without masks. Voters were required to place their voter ID and voter cards on a specific spot at the registration table, where poll workers wore gloves and shields on their faces along with masks covering their mouths and nose.

Then, voters were asked to put a plastic glove on their writing hand to sign in before going to the voting booth where they continued to wear the glove. Once finished, they could discard the plastic glove in the trash.

Deborah Alexander was nervous about crowds during early voting, so she waited until Thursday to cast her ballot in person.

“It was real organized and very nice,” she said about voting at Christ United Baptist Church on Raines Road. “It took me no time. They told me the crowds were not bad during early voting, but I wanted to take precautions because of Covid.”

She said she was the 31st person to vote at the polling precinct in Whitehaven about 10 a.m. Thursday.

“Everything went smoothly,” she said.

At Riveroaks Presbyterian Church in Germantown, voters could walk right in as 9 a.m. approached.

There was no need to wait in line or use the social distanced markers on the floor due to the smooth process.

Patti Possel, who is running as the unopposed Republican representative for District 96, was asking voters if they needed a Republican sample ballot as they walked in to cast their ballot.

In addition to her face shield, she wore yellow as the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote approaches on Aug. 18.

Jerry Rivers, wearing his Dallas Cowboys face mask, said it took him only a few minutes to vote Thursday morning at Riverside Missionary Baptist Church in Whitehaven.

He was the 19th person to vote at the precinct shortly after 9 a.m.

“I felt protected,” Rivers said about voting during a pandemic. “They had all the precautions in place.”

As soon as voters walked in the door of the church’s life center, poll workers told them to follow the markers on the floor, directing them to a table to sign in.

Tennessee Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Mancini reacted to the state Supreme Court’s ruling late Wednesday that allows all absentee ballots cast for Thursday’s election to count but limits COVID-related absentee voting in November.

“The goal of every elected official in Tennessee should be to ensure that every citizen, regardless of party affiliation, is able to safely and securely cast their ballot and fully participate in our democracy,” Mancini said in a statement. “This is a fundamental principle and a core value we should all share.” 

The court decided Wednesday, in two cases from Memphis and Nashville, that concerns about getting sick from COVID-19 are not reason enough alone to cast an absentee ballot in the November election, which includes the presidential race. 

The court did say, however, that absentee ballots can be allowed for those with underlying medical conditions that could be aggravated by the virus and the caretakers of those individuals.