4 days left for early voting
Three polling places are open through Friday for the ELOST, SPLOST and city elections.
Three polling places are open through Friday.
The Rome Civic Center opened Monday as a third universal precinct, drawing 50 early voters in advance of the Nov. 7 election.
The facility on Jackson Hill joins the Floyd County Administration Building, 12 E. Fourth Ave., and Garden Lakes Baptist Church as a location where any registered voter may cast a ballot.
Early voting runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Friday. All 25 precincts will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Elections Supervisor Willie Green said 50 people voted at Garden Lakes Baptist on Monday and 119 went to the administration building to cast ballots. The 219 votes bring the total of early voters to 1,516 since the precincts opened on Oct. 16.
There were 48,275 active registered voters in Floyd County as of Oct. 1.
“Historically municipal elections have had a lower turnout than general elections,” Green noted.
Rome voters will choose three city commissioners and all seven school board members. Cave Spring has three city council seats on its ballot.
All Floyd County voters are deciding two proposed local option sales tax extensions: An $80 million ELOST for school construction and a $63.8 million SPLOST for special projects overseen by the governments.
If approved, the 5-year collections would start when the current ones expire on March 31, 2019.
The current packages were approved in the 2013 municipal election year, when fewer than 14,000 voters weighed in. The SPLOST narrowly passed, 6,885 to 6,801, and the ELOST received overwhelming support, 9,251 to 4,541.