The 2024 primary in Coffee County has been a memorable, although not necessarily a pleasant, election. The vote count was delayed several hours by a scanner issue. Then, when the votes were uploaded to the Secretary of State’s web site, three precincts — Ambrose, Bridgetown, and Nicholls — showed zero votes.
The Coffee County Elections Office has maintained since Tuesday night that all votes were counted and tabulated correctly. However, many people have had their doubts. Friday morning, election officials will take an action that they believe will straighten everything out.
Election supervisor Christy Nipper spoke to DouglasNow Thursday afternoon. She stated that the votes in those three precincts had been counted and recorded in the Advance Vote category (the other categories are Absentee, Provisional, and Election Day). Officials ran those ballots in one batch, which lumped all the ballots in the Advance Vote category. Nipper stated that Friday morning, they were going to delete the votes from those precincts out of the Advance category and rescan those ballots, which would put them correctly in the Election Day category.
“We want to be absolutely certain that the numbers are correct before we certify the election. We want complete transparency through this process. We are following the advice of our attorneys, the Secretary of State’s Office, and the Center for Election Systems. It’s a complicated process but we want to do it correctly,” said Nipper.
As a result, election certification will be delayed until Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.
Nipper added that in addition to election office personnel, the election board and representatives of both the local Democratic and Republican parties will be present to monitor the process. She also stated that she does not expect this to alter the number of votes from Tuesday’s initial count; it will place the precincts in the correct category. “This won’t change the numbers. It will just make sure everything is in the correct place,” said Nipper.
A total of 7,168 voters cast ballots in the primary out of 22,854 registered voters — a turnout of 31.36 percent — according to Tuesday’s count.
The meeting will begin at 10 a.m. Friday at the elections office behind City Hall.