date comparison greater than or equal to in Countif formula doesn't include dates equal to & multi-year comparison

Greater Than or Equal to
I have this set of dates:

A2:A4 [01/04/2023,01/10/2023,01/11/2023]

I create a formula using countif looking for how many values are greater than or equal to A3 expecting a return value of 2:
= COUNTIF(A2:A4, ">="&A3&")")
Actual return value = 1

notes:
in practice with this case, I could just use greater than the date prior although I'm wondering if I've done something wrong to cause "greater than or equal to" to not function

Multi-Year Comparison
If I take the same dates and update the last one to be the year after:
A2:A4 [01/04/2023,01/10/2023,01/11/2024]

I create a formula using countif looking for how many values are greater than or equal to A3 expecting a return value of 2:
= COUNTIF(A2:A4, ">="&A3&")")
Actual return value = 0

notes:
I found that removing the appended &")" does end up counting the final date although that section was recommended to me when doing multiple comparisons for ranges when I submitted a ticket

If I'm not using something I should be using to make these work correctly or If I'm just way off base please let me know any help would be appreciated