Certified vote totals show signs of frustration with mail delays
Barbara and Ron Williams wanted to make sure their absentee ballots in the August election reached the Shelby County Election Commission in time to be counted.
They also wanted to track the movement of their mail-in ballots, so they sent them July 24 by certified mail with the U.S. Postal Service.
Since they never received word their ballots had been received as election day approached, they each voted in person on paper provisional ballots.
Their ballots had only made it from a distribution center in the city to the Bartlett Post Office a week after election day.
“We did do a provisional ballot and will be voting in person in November,” Barbara Williams posted on Facebook the same day last week she got the notice that the ballots were on their way for an election over almost a week.
Linda Phillips
The next day was when their ballots reached the Bartlett post office.
“Almost three weeks in transit from the Brunswick TN Post Office,” Ron Williams posted on Facebook. “Not to the Election Commission yet, but getting closer. Frankly, I could have walked faster and delivered them personally.”
They have filed complaints with the U.S. Postal Service.
The couple are part of a gap of more than 3,000 people between the number who requested absentee ballots from the Shelby County Election Commission and the number of absentee ballots actually cast.
They were also among more than 100 who voted provisional ballots at polling places on election day after requesting absentee ballots.
A total of 233 provisional ballots were cast, according to Shelby County Elections Administrator Linda Phillips. She estimates 75% of the provisional ballots – or 174 -- were cast by those who had requested absentee ballots.
The provisional ballots total in the certified election results approved by the Shelby County Election Commission Monday, Aug. 24, shows 77 more provisional ballots than the count of 233. Phillips said those 77 provisionals were ballots cast during power outages at some polling places and to correct a precinct split error at a polling place.
The Election Commission got 19,440 requests for absentee ballots. Of that total, 16,278 of the ballots were cast by the closing of the polls on election day, leaving a gap of 3,162 absentee ballots not cast or not granted.
The absentee total also includes military ballots.
The number of absentee ballots and provisional ballots was far above what is normal for the election cycle of state and federal primaries in Shelby County and across Tennessee that precedes the November presidential general election cycle.
The 233 provisional ballots compares to 27 cast in the same election cycle four years ago.
In the August 2016 elections, 1,345 absentee ballots were cast and counted by the certified vote compared to 16,941 in the 2020 election.
The certified turnout for the election was 126,268 with 82,329 voting in the Democratic primary, 42,379 voting in the Republican primary and another 1,560 voting the general election ballot only.
The certified count across all races on the ballot comes to a 21.9% turnout of the 575,157 voters on the rolls in Shelby County.
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absentee voting Shelby County Election Commission Linda Phillips provisional ballotsBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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