A US mail truck that may have been transporting absentee ballots to Georgia caught fire on Monday and was entirely destroyed.
The Jeep was in a rural location close to Pretoria/Tarva Road, about 10 miles southwest of Albany, when it caught fire, according to images posted on Facebook by the Baker County Sheriff’s Office.
The delivery driver, according to the sheriff’s office, was unharmed, but the car and all the mail inside of it are total losses.
Congratulations, Georgia voters! We've reached 1 MILLION cast votes. Election officials deserve our thanks for rising to the challenge & working hard to serve our communities. Early Voting will continue through Nov. 4th. The deadline to request a mail ballot is Friday! pic.twitter.com/eOKiuoMZP9
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) October 25, 2022
According to deputies, the Newton Post Office keeps a list of the mail and items that were delivered along the route. For further information, those who missed a delivery should get in touch with the post office.
The Secretary of State’s Office addressed the fire during a press conference on Tuesday, noting that election officials had already met with the local election director about it.
43 ballots remain uncounted in the county, according to the agency. In order to reprint them, they are collaborating with USPS to see if they have any photographs of what might have been on that vehicle. In the worst case scenario, they will reprint the 43 ballots or the county will reissue the 43 ballots, and the ballots that are accepted will be the first to pass the checkpoint for those voters.
During an election cycle, state election authorities may have to deal with a variety of issues, Sterling continued.
As of Tuesday night, more than a million votes have been cast in the state’s midterm elections, according to the Twitter account of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
