By Alicia B. Hill

alicia.hill@lagrangenews.com

LaGRANGE –  This time it was an overabundance of voters that led to late election results in Troup County on Tuesday.

The Troup County Board of Elections had a late night thanks to high voter turnout and 1,283 paper ballots that had to be processed before early voting results and the ballots from 14 other precincts could be counted.

The final results for Troup County were not available until after midnight, hours after Georgia was officially called in President-elect Trump’s favor.

“You can’t open (absentee ballots) until a certain time,” explained Elections Supervisor Andy Harper.  “We started what we could by law as soon as we could (at 5 p.m.).”

According to Harper, the high number of absentee ballots was the reason behind the late night at the courthouse.  

“It was a great turnout,” said Harper.  “73.84 percent without the provisional ballots.”

Troup County’s turnout for the election was 26,096 voters, not counting provisional ballots.  Approximately 43,000 people in Troup County were registered to vote as of September.