• By Todd Luck
• Posted Thursday, November 15, 2018

Forsyth to finalize election results on Friday

The Forsyth County Board of Elections will hold its Canvass Meeting on Friday to finalize the results of the 2018 General Election.

Forsyth BOE’s last meeting to count supplemental absentee ballots will be today at 5 p.m., followed by its Canvass Meeting on Friday, Nov. 16, starting at 11 a.m. Both meetings will be held at the BOE office in the Forsyth County Government Center, 201 N. Chestnut St.

Canvass is required by law for every elections office in the country to double check and finalize how many votes were cast in each election. Elections results, available through the BOE’s site, will be updated and made official when canvass is completed Friday afternoon.

Every year, there’s a lot of work that leads up to the meeting. Election staff has been auditing the results to check the number of ballots cast against the number of applications signed by voters. They research provisional ballots to approve any that are valid and count any outstanding absentee ballots.

They also conducted a hand-eye recount last week on two random precincts to ensure that tabulator machines used in the election counted votes accurately.

“Everybody thinks that the election is over on Election Night, but it doesn’t become official until Canvass,” said Forsyth BOE Director Tim Tsujii.

According to the unofficial results, nearly 52 percent of registered voters in Forsyth County cast their ballot in the General Election. This is up from 2014, when 44 percent of registered voters participated. To view election results, visit www.forsyth.cc/election