When polls opened on Election Day, 79,784 Georgians who requested an absentee, mail-in ballot had not returned their ballot and have not voted early. WhoWhatWhy’s exclusive reporting allows those voters to check the status of their votes while there’s just enough time to still get to the polls.

Among all voters who have been issued a ballot but have not yet voted, 44.1 percent are black, 36.6 percent are white, and 5.4 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander.

Of that total, 2,630 mail-in ballots have been rejected — often for minor technical issues — and the affected voters have not yet been able to cast a new ballot.

It is vitally important to note that not all Georgia counties report their ballot rejection rates to the state. Only 102 of 159 counties have reported any rejections at all as of Monday night, and there is no guarantee that those counties have reported all of the rejections.

The problem of counties rejecting mail-in ballots may be — and almost certainly is — much worse than we know.

To put all this into perspective