INDIANAPOLIS — Election night brought a surge of voters to Marion County and a shortage of people who help count their ballots.

“You had a limited number of people who were available at 9 am on a Tuesday to come volunteer their time,” Marion County Election Spokesperson Dan Goldblatt said. “A lot of people are working the polls if they are able to. A lot of people are working their day jobs. It’s just a matter of getting people when they are available.”

Goldblatt said 41% of registered voters cast ballots. More than 88,000 people voted early in person, followed by another 160,000 on Election Day.

After the Election Board made a last-minute plea for more poll workers, Goldblatt said residents stepped up to help.

“We had hundreds of people,” he said. “We knocked it out in probably record time for the amount of ballots. We’ve never had that many ballots before. We were expecting to be done midnight, 1 to 2 am and all our volunteers were done around 830pm.”

Still, Goldblatt said Wednesday the counting wasn’t over and that only 99% of the votes had been processed. Although on the city’s official website, it said 100% of the votes were counted.

“The candidates have been able to declare themselves or opponents winners, as we pretty much have 99 percent counted,” Goldblatt said. “Mathematically, they know how the races are going to go. These last few thousand votes, though. These are just as important as every other vote.”

As for the other 1% of the ballots, he said they can get difficult.

“Sometimes these are ballots that were damaged in the mail,” Goldblatt said. “Maybe have a smudge on it and couldn’t be read by the machine or possibly occasionally the machine’s even damaged the ballots. That doesn’t make them unreadable. That doesn’t mean you can’t count them. We just have to print them, and it takes a while because a bipartisan team is going through that ballot.”

Goldblatt said these aren’t provisional ballots or ones where voters’ eligibility still has yet to be verified. The state has 10 days from the election to certify its results.

Goldblatt said they welcome additional volunteers as they prep for the next election in May.

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