On Nov. 3, Lee County prepared its polling places for the long lines of registered voters expected to turn out at each location. According to Lee County Probate Judge Bill English, the turnout was not above average, unlike what was expected in other parts of the country.
Lee County saw 57.5% voter turnout last week, while the County saw 57.6% during the general election in 2016. English was expecting over 60% voter turnout. English clarified that Auburn had only 59,000 votes in 2016 while there were 71,000 votes in this election, so there is now a greater number of registered voters.
The 2020 election saw 12,616 absentee ballots in Lee County, while the previous record was 3,094 in 2016. All ballots that were counted were postmarked by the day before the election and arrived by noon on Election Day.
English received multiple calls from concerned residents who were not receiving updates on their ballots. He said that many ballots were processed before their statuses were updated online.
“We could’ve gotten a ballot processed today and it might be a week before we get it posted to the state’s website,” English said. “We were getting multiple trays of mail every day for the last month.”
English believes many people took the availability of absentee voting as an excuse to vote early. Many of those who voted early at the County courthouse waited in longer lines than were seen at polling places on Election Day, which English found ironic.
The longest waits on Election Day were at the Frank Brown Recreation Center in Auburn and Providence Church in Beauregard, which both saw a maximum of 90 minutes. Lines at the courthouse often stretched two to four hours.
English drove between all of Lee County’s polling places on Nov. 3 and encountered no issues that lengthened the amount of time it took to vote.
Some polling places saw lines forming as early as 5 a.m., English said. They saw another rush around lunchtime and expected a third rush after working hours, though it never came. The lines generally got shorter as the day went on.
There was a rumor that Beauregard had a nonfunctional ballot counting machine, but English explained that the machine in question was for helping disabled voters in marking their ballots, and it was indeed operational. Multiple polling places had only one ballot collector, but those locations typically have only one collector, he said.
Though the Alabama Secretary of State listed the County’s election results as unofficial for days after the election, the only votes left uncounted were provisional ballots, English said. The Board of Registrars later determined the eligibility of each provisional ballot on an individual basis before they were sent to be counted.
“The only avenue for potential fraud I see is if someone intercepts the mail or [applies for someone else’s absentee ballot,]” English said. “That is why, for most of [the election process,] we had the ID requirement.”
Out of the over 12,600 absentee ballots from the 2020 election, English expects no more than a “handful” of ballots to be flagged as potentially fraudulent.
“We had a total of less than 600 provisional [ballots] in Lee County,” English said. “My rough rule of thumb is maybe half of those will be counted, so [I expect] a change of plus or minus 300 [additional ballots.]”
The City of Auburn currently has four polling places for general elections, though there has been a proposal for a fifth on the University’s campus. Since students vote based on their address and not workplace or school, an on-campus polling place would include on-campus residents and possibly nearby downtown residents, depending on the boundaries drawn for the voting precinct.
English is unsure of how the fifth polling place would affect voting in the future, as it would require redrawing the voting precincts. Also, the University would have to dedicate parking and space to vote, both for students and nearby Auburn residents.
“Some of the districts in Auburn are too big,” English said. “I would love to be able to reduce them, but I can’t say, ‘If you work on campus or go to school on campus, you get to vote on campus.’ That’s not how the law of representation works.”
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Charlie Ramo, junior in aerospace engineering, is the content editor of The Auburn Plainsman.
