Vote tallying in Fulton County, Georgia has been delayed after a pipe burst in the room holding the county's mail-in ballots.
According to officials who spoke with Atlanta Journal-Constitution, none of the ballots were damaged. Fulton County is Georgia's most-populous, with Atlanta inside its borders, and its votes matter greatly in determining the way that Georgia swings in the presidential election. Though the destruction of mail-in ballots could have proved disastrous, the slanted room inside Atlanta's State Farm Arena kept the ballots from being damaged. Officials say that the incident will merely delay the count in the state.
"There was a pipe that burst in the room where we actually had ballots, thank goodness that none of those ballots were damaged,” Elections official Dwight Brower said, per the AJC.
Early results of the election are still expected to arrive late on Tuesday night, though a final count will be further off. The county has already received over 130,000 mail-in ballots and scanned nearly 90,000 of those. The state of Georgia has gone for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1992, where Bill Clinton narrowly squeaked out a win. Prior to that, the last Democrat to take the state was Plains, Georgia's own Jimmy Carter.
As for this election, officials who spoke to the paper claimed that definite results could be as far off as Friday.
"It sounds to me … from a candidate standpoint, they may not know anything until Friday,” Fulton County Elections board member Mark Wingate said.
