On Election Day, Fulton County, Georgia, asked to rescan about 1,069 early-voting ballots after two scanners failed during early voting, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he does not expect the fix to delay race results.
What happened
Fulton County Elections Director Nadine Williams described the problems in a Nov. 3 memo, according to CBS News Atlanta and WSB-TV. The county wants the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections to approve a modified counting plan at its 6:30 p.m. meeting.
- Mechanicsville Library (Oct. 21): A wheelchair rolled over a scanner power cable. The machine shut down and would not work after restart. State staff advised against uploading its memory cards over possible data corruption. Plan: rescan all 361 paper ballots.
- Hugh C. Conley Recreation Center (Oct. 26): A scanner kept showing a paper-jam error even after staff found no jam. Officials stopped using it after 708 ballots. Plan: move memory cards to another scanner first; rescan paper only if that fails.
If approved, Williams estimated work would start between 7 and 7:30 p.m., after polls close, CBS News Atlanta reported. Staff said the process would be announced in the public observation area at the Election Hub and Operations Center and stay visible to the public, with closer access for authorized poll watchers.
What officials say
In a 10 a.m. Election Day update, Raffensperger said machines were taken out of service because of errors and that he does not expect delays. “It’s one of those things that can happen,” he said, according to Atlanta News First.
A Fulton County spokesperson told WSB-TV that the secretary of state’s Voting System Division recommended the corrective steps. The county said more than 328,000 ballots were cast there during early voting. Raffensperger said about 2.8 million Georgians voted early statewide, Atlanta News First reported.
Why this matters
A scanner failure does not erase a paper ballot. It means workers need a board-approved way to finish counting—from memory cards or by scanning the paper again—so each ballot is counted once. Officials say a final reconciliation should show how many ballots came from each method.
The update spread quickly on X on Election Day morning as users shared details from the county memo. Georgia polls close at 7 p.m. The secretary of state’s office posted on X reminding voters to check My Voter Page and vote. This Fulton plan covers early-voting equipment failures; it is separate from the countywide Election Day scanner outage in Westchester County, New York, reported earlier Tuesday.
Sources: CBS News Atlanta; WSB-TV; Atlanta News First; @GaSecofState on X (Nov. 3, 2026).
