February 15th, 2022 – 9:00 PM
Ethan Garrett – WRGA Digital News Editor & Video Reporter –
The Floyd County Board of Elections has voted to approve a settlement with the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office regarding 2,600 votes that were found during an audit that were not included in the original certified results during the 2020 Election.
An investigator from the secretary of state’s office found no intentional wrongdoing on behalf of the board.
What happened was a scanner jammed during early voting after a voter fanned herself with a paper ballot.
Voters are instructed not to fold or damage the paper ballot in any way from the time they vote until the time they put the paper ballot in the scanner.
The Floyd County Commission will also have to approve the $3,000 consent order fine.
Also Tuesday, the elections board voted in favor of changing the meeting times to be later in the day so that more members of the working community could join in on the public meetings. The new schedule will now include a caucus starting at 5 PM and then the public election board meeting will start at 6 PM on every third Tuesday of the month.
Interim election co-supervisor Pete McDonald gave an update on the redistricting progress for Floyd County. The staff is working to update the street addresses of registered voters before Friday the 18th, which was a deadline given to them by the Georgia Secretary of State. According to McDonald, as of February 14th, the staff has updated 97.52% of the voter’s information with 668 individual voters left to finish before Friday.
The board also voted to approve the Rome-Floyd Parks and Recreation Anthony Center in the Garden Lakes area as an early voting and replacement voting precinct for Garden Lakes Baptist Church.
*You can see more on this meeting in the WRGA Video Special presented above.