Fayette clerk talks

Christy Bollinger story at 6pm

Week long wait for election results after yesterday's unprecedented election.

County clerk's offices will be spending the next few days calculating all in- person votes..

And absentee ballots.

... ballots they'll still be receiving, through mail, until the end of the week.

Abc 36's christy bollinger talked with the fayette county clerk about how he thinks election day went.

It's our top story at 5.

L3: election 2020 white county clerk talks about election day lexington l3: election 2020 white don blevins fayette county clerk l3: election 2020 white county clerk talks about election day lexington an unusual primary...resulted in unusual turnout...the highest in 20 years.

"just shy of a 40% turnout."

Fayette county clerk don blevins says of the 92,000 requested absentee ballots..

His office has received around 85,000 back..

With more on the way.

Nat of day.

I was there for most of the day at fayette county's only polling location, kroger field... where almost 3,900 voted in- person.

There were long lines and rain...even so...blevins calls the day a win.

"wasn't perfect.

But it's what we needed to do."

He says long wait times came from hundreds of voters who had some sort of problem...like they'd already voted absentee or didn't realize as independents they couldn't vote in this partisan primary.

"there were very very few precincts this time with non-partisan races."

When polls closed at 6..

Blevins says a couple people were turned away who got in line too late and the last voter left around 8.

A lot of people around the state are already talking about repeating this style of election...in november.

"our first priority is to protect the public health.

We have to start there, and work downward in conducting an election.

The same answer will apply in november."

So it'll depend on covid, but blevins says it's obvious people like voting by mail.

"i think it's the safest, most effetive, fraud -free.

I don't wanna hear that from the people out there, there's no evidence of fraud."

He says under all this year's extraordinary circumstances..

He'd consider the primary a huge success.

"lexington, we crushed this."

Christy bollinger, abc 36 news.

Blevins says there were just six weeks to plan the primary...and the convention center was under construction...but next time...he'd put voting there instead of kroger field for more space...protected from the elements.

He also says he'd expand the number of drop off locations for absentee ballots because it was lot for the post office to handle.

### official results from this year's primary will not be released until next week.

That's due to the high number of absentee ballots that still need to be counted.

But there