Georgia election officials are confident every ballot will be counted for the U.S. Senate runoff elections, which begins with early voting on Monday.
Early voting for the runoffs will include fewer voting locations than in November, limited weekend hours and close scrutiny of election workers.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported turnout is expected to be high, though not near the record 5 million voters who turned out for last month's presidential election. More than 1.1 million absentee ballots have been requested so far, compared to a total of 1.3 million in the general election.
Counties around the state are addressing challenges for the runoffs.
One example is Cobb County, the state’s third-largest county. Cobb County was criticized after reducing its number of early voting locations from 11 for the general election to five for the runoff. The county has since added two more locations for the last week of early voting, which runs Dec. 14-Jan. 1.
Elections Director Janine Eveler said her county didn’t have enough workers to staff as many early voting sites. Fifteen people who worked the November election resigned after multiple recounts forced long hours.
"It'll be pretty high turnout, but we're prepared for that," Eveler told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We have capacity for early, Election Day and absentee voting.”
In Fayette County last month, a statewide recount determined one memory card from a machine used during early voting hadn’t been accounted for initially.
''We have our own internal plan to prevent what happened last time," said Darryl Hicks, chairman of Fayette County's election board. "We will solve the issue of forgetting to count a memory card."
Hicks said a log sheet will be kept to make sure every memory card is uploaded.
The runoff elections will be between Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler and Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Normal Election Day precincts will be open on the day of the runoffs, Jan. 5.
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