Election officials still counting votes

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind.-- Election Day is officially over, but election workers are still counting ballots across the country and here in Michiana.

In St. Joseph County, workers weren’t able to legally start counting until the polls closed at 6 o’clock Tuesday night, but they’re making progress.

“We did a little over 90% of the walk-ins yesterday, we finished those up a few hours ago and now we’re starting in on the mail-ins,” St. Joseph County Election Board member Murray Winn said.

St. Joe County received over twice as many early votes before the election than what we saw in 2016, and unlike past elections, election board member Murray Winn said that where they’re at now with the counting process is out of the ordinary.

“This is totally unusual that we had to go into the wee-hours of the morning in the past absolutely. The fact that we will still be getting ballots in until the 13,” Winn said.

Along with the influx of mail-in ballots, Winn said the mail-in counting process is very complicated, which is why things are taking longer than usual. Matching signatures seems to be an issue, and if errors like these arise then it’s a lot harder to resolve.

“Typically are getting lots of requests for verification that the signatures match. we have to look into voting history that we have on file here to get that printed so that we can see a signature that we can match it to,” Winn said. “It takes lots of additional time”

Winn said accuracy in numbers and making sure every single vote counts is what’s most important this election.

“We have to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible and there are always glitches, it always happens but it really started out pretty smoothly,” Winn said. “We’re going to make sure that what we present is the right numbers of what actually happened on election day.”

Election Board President Katherine Fanello said that full county results won’t be completed until Friday, and volunteers will be back counting again Thursday.