Marietta, September 8 - The Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration has reported an issue involving 18 uncounted absentee ballots involving two elections to state officials.  An internal investigation determined those ballots should have been counted but were not processed.

The Cobb Elections Board reported to the State Elections Board that a review found five absentee ballots for the May 2022 election and 13 absentee provisional ballots for the November 2022 general election were not opened and processed.  

Board of Elections and Registration Chairwoman Tori Silas notes that the unprocessed ballots would not have impacted election results.

“Even though this involves a small number of ballots, we take this issue very seriously,” Chairwoman Silas said. “We have made the Secretary of State’s office aware of our findings.  Following the 2022 election cycle, we made process improvements, including procedures to track and log ballots when they are received by the office.  The improvements are designed to catch and prevent mistakes such as these.”

The issue initially came to the attention of interim Director Gerry Miller and was reported to board members.