Voters in Bulloch County have not only turned out to vote early in person at a record pace on weekdays so far in the runup to the Nov. 5, 2024, general election, they have set a record for Saturday voting last weekend.
Because of some confusion about the starting time for Saturday voting, citizens were already lining up at 7 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, when poll workers arrived at the Board of Elections and Registration office, county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones reported the next day. Although the elections office is open for advanced in-person voting 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, the Saturday voting hours are always 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.
An otherwise helpful sign set up by a community organization not far from the elections office carried a mistaken 8 a.m. Saturday start time and contributed to the early lineup, Jones said. But any frustration this generated apparently did not deter most voters.
“We voted a whopping 845 people yesterday, which is history making on a Saturday per my appointment in 2021,” Jones stated in an email Sunday. “I do not have voting stats for the first Saturday from 2020.”
However, in a story four years ago, the Statesboro Herald did report an early voting turnout number from Oct. 24, 2020, the only Saturday for voting in the Nov. 3, 2020, general election. That one Saturday, 526 Bulloch County residents voted, and that was during the season that officials encouraged early and absentee voting like never before because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, Georgia’s election laws were changed to mandate a second statewide voting Saturday in general elections. This Saturday, Oct. 26, the Bulloch County elections office at the County Annex, 113 North Main St., Suite 201, will again host in-person early voting from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.
On-campus 3 days
Meanwhile, the County Annex continues to be available for early voting from Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., and is currently joined by a second location for three days. Tuesday through Thursday, Oct. 22-24 only, a room in the Russell Union, 85 Georgia Ave., on the Georgia Southern University campus is also open for voting by Bulloch County registered voters. Voting hours there are also 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Next week’s added site
For the final five weekdays of early voting there will again be another voting location, in addition to the County Annex. The new, additional site will be at the university Business Innovation Group’s recently renovated building called the Entrepreneurship Innovation Incubator, at 64 East Main St., not far from Statesboro City Hall. It will be open for voting Monday through Friday, Oct. 28-Nov. 1, from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. daily. The building’s front parking area faces Railroad Street and Eagle Creek Brewing Company.
The County Annex will also be open for early voting those days and hours, with all early voting to cease at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1. Bulloch County’s 16 traditional voting precincts will then open for their remaining assigned voters on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Record pace
With only the County Annex location available for early voting the first five days, through last Saturday, 6,270 Bulloch residents had cast ballots early in-person, while 566 paper absentee ballots had been returned, for a total of 6,829 voters to that point, Jones reported.
Monday, Oct. 21, another 1,252 Bulloch County people voted early in-person, and apparently 63 more absentee ballots were received back at the election headquarters. Jones gave the new cumulative totals as 7,522 in-person and 629 absentees, for a total of 8,151 early votes so far.
With far fewer absentee ballots being requested, the number of those cannot reach the November 2020 general election’s pandemic-era paper ballot total of 6,464. But that election’s early in-person voter total was 14,356, and more than half that number had voted early in-person so far this season with half of the early voting days still to go.
“Of course, the absentees by mail were higher due to the pandemic (in 2020), but we may make that up by voting more in-person as I feel we are off to a great start,” Jones said Monday.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported that Monday – referred to as the eighth day of early voting statewide with a few counties having optional Sunday voting – the count of advanced voters statewide passed the 1.5 million mark.
With 1,504,332 voters, this had shattered previous early voting performance, according to the release from Raffensperger’s office. In the first eight days of early voting in previous years, 533,283 (2018), 1,010,162 (2020), and 894,412 (2022) voters had turned out in-person, the release stated.