Smith County report shows 64% voter turnout, abandoned ballots

Published 3:45 pm Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Smith County recorded a solid 64.28% voter turnout in the 2024 Presidential Election, with over 104,000 ballots cast despite some being abandoned or rejected.

“It’s a decent turnout,” Election Administrator Michelle Allcon said. “It’s not nearly as high as we were hoping for.”

Allcon presented a voter turnout report to the Smith County Commissioners on Tuesday. The report highlighted the need to better educate voters on completing the voting process, including properly using voting machines and submitting ballots.

In Smith County, 104,547 ballots were successfully counted, representing nearly two-thirds of the county’s registered voters. A total of 104,603 voters checked in during the election. There were 208 that were rejected, including both provisional and absentee ballots, and 49 were classified as walkaways or abandoned.

Allcon explained that not all provisional and limited ballots were included in the report, as they were still being manually input into the system when it was created. This accounts for the discrepancy between total check-ins and the final tally.

“Walkaway and abandoned ballots for both early voting and Election Day, in my opinion, are too high,” Allcon said. “That’s something that needs to be improved on.”

An abandoned or walkaway ballot occurs when a voter checks in but does not complete the voting process. This can happen if the voter decides not to vote, leaves their ballot in the voting machine without submitting it to the ballot box or mistakenly takes the ballot with them, believing it to be a receipt. The state classifies such instances as actions by a “fleeing voter.”

“We need to make sure that everybody realizes that those ballots in their hands, those paper cards that have their selections listed, are actual ballots, and they haven’t voted until it’s actually in the ballots box,” Allcon said.

More than 40 ballots in Smith County were abandoned or classified as walkaway ballots during the voting process.

During two weeks of early voting, 82,050 voters checked in; 21 were either abandoned or considered walkaway.

There were 82,029 ballots, including provisional and limited ballots, were counted. Of the 58 potential provincial ballots cast, 39 were eligible to be counted, and 484 limited ballots were counted.

Provisional ballots are ballots at a polling place that are potential countable ballots, but were not positive of the voter’s eligibility — those ballots go to a different location pending further research by election officials.

Limited ballots are for voters who moved but did not change their registration before the due date. Voters with limited ballots are only eligible for races that overlap with their previous residence. Limited ballots are also stored separately from standard ballots to confirm eligibility.

On Election Day, 19,451 voters checked in, and 19,423 ballots were cast, leaving a difference of 28 ballots classified as either abandoned or walk-away. There were 86 potential provisional ballots, 29 of which were eligible for counting.

Of the 3,234 absentee ballots received, 3,095 were successfully counted, while 132 were rejected for not meeting legal requirements. This left a discrepancy of seven ballots. Election officials confirmed that three envelopes were returned without ballots inside. One ballot was scanned twice after being recreated from the original, leaving three unaccounted for.

“A good chunk of our provisional ballots that were eligible to be counted were from curable mail-in ballots that decided just to vote in person instead,” Allcon said.

Presidential elections typically see a voter turnout of 70 to 75%.

Smith County’s turnout for the 2020 Presidential Election was approximately 68%. Smith County saw 79,787 ballots cast during three weeks of early voting representing 60% of the registered voters. Early voting was extended to three weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re a little bit less than that, but it was still a good turnout,” Allcon said.

The Smith County Commissioners Court approved the election canvassing after the report.