WEBER COUNTY — To call Tuesday and beyond busy days for election officials in Weber County and across the state of Utah would be an understatement.

Though thousands of mailed-in and early-vote ballots have already been processed, according to an email from Weber County Clerk/Auditor Ricky Hatch, the county saw nearly 90% turnout for the 2024 general election.

“We’re still reconciling, so I don’t have exact numbers of total ballots on hand,” he said. “Overall, I think we’ll be close to our projected 88% turnout, with a total of about 120,000 ballots being cast in Weber County.”

He added there have been two words for this Election Day and the aftermath.

“Organized chaos,” he said. “Like every election day, there were hiccups, technological issues, changes in plans and fantastic election workers and voters who adjusted and made things work.”

Hatch said in the last 30 years the record turnout for the county was 89%, set during the 2020 general election.

One place to see organized chaos play out in real time Tuesday was the Exhibit Hall at the Weber County Fairgrounds. Inside, a line snaked its way throughout the building to reach the check-in desks and the voting booths beyond. At times, this line even made its way outside the building.

Hatch said that in-person Election Day voting was higher than normal at both the Exhibit Hall and the Ogden Valley Branch Library in Huntsville.

“We estimate approximately 8,000 people voted in person, which is approximately 6-7% of total registered voters,” he said. “Historically, our in-person turnout is 3% or less, so this was as least double the turnout. The Ogden Valley Library saw a similarly high increase in in-person voters. We know that presidential elections bring out a lot of people who only vote every four years, so we expected an increase. I figured it would be 5%, but it ended up being closer to 7%, and while that additional 2% doesn’t seem like much, when you couple it with the normal but unpredictable hiccups that happen, you get lines.”

He said he wasn’t entirely sure of why in-person voting rose so much but speculated on a few factors.

“It could be encouragement by certain candidates to vote in person, it could be the stories of drop box arson that happened in Oregon and Washington, and it could be new voters who hadn’t registered and received a ballot in the mail,” he said. “I suspect all of these reasons had an impact.”

Hatch said additional results are expected to be released Thursday and continuing into next week.

“We’re hoping that by Friday evening, we’ll have all of our regular ballots fully processed,” he said. “We will then focus entirely on the 4,000 or so provisional ballots. After that, some ballots will continue to trickle in that were mailed before the deadline, but those numbers will be tiny.”

All results are unofficial until canvasing.