Bladen County absentee and provisional ballots counted
By WECT Staff | November 10, 2020 at 9:33 PM EST – Updated November 11 at 12:08 AM
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. (WECT) – The Bladen County Board of Elections met Tuesday night to consider absentee and provisional ballots cast in the 2020 General Election.
According to Elections Director Chris Williams, the board considered 61 absentee ballots and accepted 58. The board also looked at 127 provisional ballots cast on election day, accepting 39 full ballots and nine partials. Williams said if an individual goes to the wrong precinct to cast a ballot, the votes cast for the wrong precinct races are not accepted but votes for other races are accepted.
We will not know until later this week whether the additional 106 votes will make a difference in the closest race in Bladen County, for the third county-wide seat on the Board of Commissioners. The election night results show G. Michael Cogdell leading David Gooden by just 15 votes, 3,042 – 3,027 for that third seat. Williams says he plans to add the accepted absentee and provisional votes to the election results at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday.
The county canvass to make the election results official will begin at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, November 13. Williams said if the county receives any additional absentee-by-mail ballots that have met the postmark deadline of 5:00 p.m. on November 3, the board will consider them prior to starting the vote canvass.
Copyright 2020 WECT. All rights reserved.
