MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Americans across the nation are getting ready to vote, as Election Day is hours away. Nevertheless, millions of people have already voted.
Tre Hargett, Tennessee’s Secretary of State, said almost 2.3 million people cast their vote early, and that is more than 51 percent of registered voters. Hargett said he believes many more will turn out on Tuesday.
“Local election officials are putting the finishing touches on making sure they’re doing everything they can to make voting safe, clean and secure,” Hargett said.
Hargett spoke with WREG-TV about potential voting fraud in Tennessee. Hargett said to his knowledge, there have not been any reports of fraud.
“Nobody has called me to tell me about anything. I’ve had people who make accusations,” Hargett said. “I certainly haven’t seen anything widespread, and I think that’s a large credit to local election officials and making sure they verify signatures on absentee ballot requests and absentee ballots as they come back in. “
Hargett added, ” I think what separates us from some of the things you might see in other states is that a voter requests an absentee ballot here. It’s not automatically mailed to them, and I think some of the states where you see some issues or potential issues in are states that never really successfully pulled off a by mail election and have tried to do so during this pandemic.”
Tomorrow around 30,000 absentee ballots will be counted at FedEx Forum. Thanks to state Cares Act funding, the Shelby County Election Commission will have eight new ballot scanners, bringing the total to 12. It should help move the process along.
” I think there are a few counties out there, Davidson and Shelby probably being the top two that just because of the volume of absentee ballots they’ve gotten it’s going to take them some extra time and that doesn’t mean they’ve done something wrong, it doesn’t mean there’s an issue, it just means it takes more time to count that many ballots,” Hargett said.
Hargett said most unofficial results will be in by midnight
