nearly 1.# million were early in-person votes and there are also about 170,000 mail-in ballots. those can continue to be received today, but they must be in by the time polls close tonight, except and we should really emphasize this, except in cobb county where a judge ordered the deadline be extended december 9th after voters requested absentee ballots and never received them. big picture bottom line is election officials were able to start processing early in-person and mail-in ballots early today. hopefully we ll see results quickly before 7:00 p.m. they all say the three election votes will be the first round in key counties. also statewide voting is going very smoothly and that only 3 out of the 1,000 precincts are experiencing lines longer than 20 minutes.
walker voters, even more of them thought that party control was very important to their vote. 82% of walker voters said which party controls the senate was very important to their vote. and that of course is an argument taken away in this runoff. they don t have that because we know democrats will control the senate. jake? that s okay. thank you so much. fascinating numbers, david. i want to turn to some new reporting, manu, that you have about candidate quality among republicans. real concerns about that when we look at what happened here in their failure to take back the senate. we ll see if they lose in georgia tonight. but seeing what happened in arizona. pennsylvania a race they thought they could win. we ll see what happens in georgia. the push among top republicans is to get more heavily involved in the primaries in the next election cycle to avoid a repeat of what happened here. because this election cycle led by rick scott decided not to
period. democrats believe they have an advantage. the black vote is starting here many fulton county. the black vote here. in the suburbs, as well. a race on the margin turn out the black vote. this is the columbus area. senator warnock headquarters in atlanta and from savannah. he has localized ads saying i am one of you. chatham county. look at atlanta and the suburbs. the black vote in the rural areas pockets everywhere. early vote helped. can you deliver on election day? this is going to be crucial here. now less than three hours until almost aumll the polls close. more coverage of the election tonight. but first, the breaking news.
matters so much. thank you very much. wolf? there s also big news here in washington. january 6 select committee announcing it will make what are called formal criminal referrals to the u.s. department of justice. chairman bennie thompson declining to say which individuals are subject or how many he expects the panel to make and now clear the committee found evidence of crimes part of the investigation into the 2020 election. let s go to sara murray part of the team that broke the story here on cnn. reporter: bennie thompson said that the committee will make criminal referrals. it means that this committee believed they have enough evidence that a crime occurred. doj doesn t take the cues from
2020 election jack smith subpoenaed election officials in wisconsin, in michigan, in arizona trying to get any communications between themselves and president donald trump and his 2020 campaign. as an election official yourself you ve testified before the fulton county grand jury also looking at trump s efforts to overturn the results in georgia. what do you make of this? well, they re doing their work, but in georgia i showed after the 2020 race we had a fair and honest account. in fact, we counted those ballots three times. we did a hand recount. 100% of all the paper ballots and recounted and president trump still came up short. and so we ve done our work. i sent a letter to congress, and so they have all the information out there. and just like today we re in a fair and honest election. one of the candidates is going to come up short, the other is going to win. i know one of the campaigns will be happy to enhance that, the other will be disappointed.