Absentee ballots collected on Election Day in Fairfax County to be counted Wednesday

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (FOX 5 DC) - In Northern Virginia, new video shows elections precinct workers arriving at the Fairfax County Government Center with sealed boxes after polls closed Tuesday. FOX 5’s Tisha Lewis reports the ballots in those boxes will be counted Wednesday.

Since the polls closed at 7 p.m., droves of precinct workers were seen carrying sealed boxes coming and going at Fairfax County Government Center. It was the most activity on Tuesday there.

“The sealed boxes were filled with absentee ballots that were placed in drop boxes in all the precincts of Fairfax Co. Those will be brought in and processed the same way we processed the absentee ballots via the mail between now and Friday noon... Why not count them tonight? Because we will be processing absentee ballots that come in by mail by Friday noon so there’s no need to do that right away when our people have been at it since 5o’clock this morning,” said Steve Hunt, Electoral Board Chair for Fairfax County.

Just minutes after polls closed across the Commonwealth, Fairfax County poll workers came in droves dropping off sealed boxes.

Fairfax County elections staff says the ballots inside the sealed boxes are from ballot drop boxes across the county.

Elections staff also says the ballots in the boxes will be counted Wednesday “because in part we need to make sure that people who turned in mail-in ballots today didn’t also vote in person,” said Brian Worthy, a spokesperson for Fairfax County Elections Office.

This comes as the county experienced record-breaking numbers in early voting turnout — more than 404,000 registered voters cast their ballots.

There are 243 precincts and 3,800 election officers in Fairfax County alone.