Floyd voter turnout: More than 50% so far
♦ Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger still expects a busy Election Day at the polls.
Over half of Floyd County’s active voters have already cast ballots, Elections Chief Robert Brady said late Wednesday.
“We’ve had thousands of people come through and early vote,” Brady said. “It’s just amazing. I’m tickled to see this keep going.”
According to numbers late Wednesday, 20,961 Floyd County residents had voted early in person and 9,848 absentee ballots had been received and logged. That’s just over half of Floyd County’s 60,727 registered voters.
“I was expecting a paper deluge from absentee ballots, like in June, but we’re getting absolutely phenomenal participation,” Brady said.
Unlike in the June primary, the elections office has begun preparing and scanning absentee ballots early.
“All of our absentee ballots have been tallied; they’re in the computer,” Brady said. He estimated that bit of preparation alone will save around 12 hours of work on election night.
Early voting is already working toward rivaling voter participation totals, including Election Day, in previous presidential races. In 2008, voter participation in Floyd County was at about 73%, in 2012 it was 70% and in 2016 voter participation clocked in at 74%.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office characterized the amount of participation statewide as “a significant surge from past years and is part of the record early turnout.”
‘Make a plan’
Georgians who have not yet voted for the Nov. 3 election need to plan ahead for long lines in the final days of early voting as well as on Election Day, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday.
Anyone still planning to vote by mail also needs to hand in their absentee ballot at their county elections office or in a local drop box, rather than trust their vote to the over- stressed U. S. postal system, Raffensperger added.
With the early-voting period set to run through Friday, Georgians have already cast more than double the number of early and mail-in ballots for this 2020 presidential election than were cast in the 2016 election. So far, more than 3.2 million Georgians have voted early and by mail, Raffensperger said.
The secretary of state’s office now expects around 5.5 million Georgians to vote in the Nov. 3 election, vastly more than the 4.1 million votes tallied in 2016.
Even with such high early turnout, state and local election officials expect Thursday and Friday to potentially draw the largest numbers of voters, likely prompting long lines that have already been seen since early voting kicked off on Oct. 12.
On Wednesday, Raffensperger urged Georgians still needing to vote to “make a plan” for the last two days of early voting or for Election Day, when he estimates 2 million more voters could cast ballots in person.
Raffensperger also urged mail-in voters to deliver their absentee ballots quickly to one of their county’s drop boxes or local elections office, particularly since officials are now able to start processing those ballots to help curb possible delays in reporting results next week.