DeKalb tops early voting’s ’08 totals

DeKalb County early voting totals have surpassed those of the historic 2008 election, officials confirmed Monday.

On Friday, early voting totals reached 166,280, according to election data posted on the county’s website. That amount also includes 16,079 absentee ballots.

The number tops that of the historic 2008 election season, which had 150,897 early voting ballots. A decade ago, early voting was held only a week before elections, between Oct. 27 and Oct. 31 — much shorter than the three weeks currently allowed for early voting.

But DeKalb elections director Erica Hamilton stopped just short of saying totals as of Monday would surpass the amount of ballots cast a decade ago in the general election.

“I can’t gauge it, but with the surge in voters, we’ll be close,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday morning.

Hamilton predicted the county would pass 2008 early voting totals Friday, the last day for early voting. Typically the busiest for early voting, the final day had wait times up to 2½ hours at a few precincts, Hamilton said, including at South DeKalb Mall, where the last ballot was cast at 10:46 p.m.

“With the enthusiasm that voters have shown, I think we’ll have a good turnout tomorrow,” Hamilton said.

Statewide, the number of early voters is a new high for a midterm election, with 2.1 million votes cast ahead of today’s election. Early turnout more than doubled from the last midterm election in 2014, when about 954,000 people cast advance ballots.