Judge Doyal Addresses Voting Issues Montgomery County has produced a plan of action to ensure future election results are not held up by an inability to quickly process mail-in ballots. Election results last Tuesday night were not released until about 11:30 – much later than the county Elections Office’s usual practice. “I met with our Elections Administrator Suzie Harvey and other elections officials Wednesday to better understand the issue and hammer out some steps we can take to avoid this situation in the future,” Judge Doyal said. “I am confident we will not experience this specific issue again. "We appreciate the work that Suzie and all of our election staff and workers did under the pressure of a very high-turnout election. They are a great team, and I am confident they will continue to do great work in the future." The holdup in the vote tallying was mail-in or absentee ballots, and also ballots emailed to county residents temporarily living outside the county, including domestic and overseas. Voters are required to print those email-ballots, fill them out and mail them back to Elections Central. Once email ballots are received, the Ballot Board has to transfer the votes to official ballot stock before the votes can be scanned in. More than 15,000 ballots by mail were sent out, and Harvey said Elections Central received about 11,000 back. This was roughly 50 percent more than 2012. The county elections office plans to take the following steps: - Release early vote totals at 7 p.m. rather than waiting until all mail-in and email-ballots are counted; the county’s practice has been to include mail-in ballots with the release of early voting numbers. Instead, the county will release the early vote totals separately, with a statement indicating mail-in and email ballot counts have not yet been tallied. - Train staff on expediting receipt of mail-in ballots. Staff members were overwhelmed by a deluge of phone calls, and at times did not move quickly enough to get mail-in ballots to the Ballot Board, thus creating some delays. Staff training will fix this issue. Mail-in and email ballots can be received by Election Central up until 7 p.m. on Election Day and until five days after the election if mailed from outside the United States. State law governs the processes for mail-in and emailed ballots. Emailed ballots were first allowed in November 2010 and were restricted to only voters outside the United States and for only elections with a federal office on the ballot or an election to fill a vacancy in the legislature. *Effective September 2015, this was amended to be available to all military voters who are outside of their county of residence and to all U.S. citizens who reside outside the United States for all elections for which they are eligible.