In a fairly busy first day of in-person early voting, 848 citizens cast ballots with the touchscreen-to-printer machines at the Bulloch County Annex on North Main Street between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday.
"We had a line of people out there this morning. …," county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones observed later in the afternoon. "By noon we were almost like close to, you know, (1% turnout). … Today is good for it to be the first day."
Additionally, 76 absentee ballots mailed to Bulloch County voters had been returned as of Tuesday afternoon, so a total of 924 voters were participating so far. That's almost 1.7% of the county's currently 55,644 voters, or 1.8% of Bulloch's 51,745 "active" voters, counted as such because they also voted in other recent elections.
What remains to be seen is whether "the momentum, will it stay like this," Jones said. "We're used to a line of people the last week of early voting because, you know, maybe then they've heard about it on Facebook. So we're used to like, 1,200 or 1,500 a day for that last week of early voting."
Tuesday, Oct. 13, was the first of 16 days of advanced in-person voting opportunity here before the Tuesday, Nov. 3, traditional Election Day. That includes two Saturdays for voting, Oct. 17 and 24. (See details of early voting hours and locations farther below.)
Just maybe this time more voters have heard about early voting and "decided to go ahead and get it out the way," Jones said, but the trend remains to be seen.
This is the general election in a gubernatorial election year — in other words, with the governor's office and all the elected state executive officer positions on the ballot. There's also the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Congressman Mike Collins. Locally, in Bulloch County Board of Commissioners District 1, Democratic incumbent Commissioner Anthony D. Simmons faces a challenge from Republican primary nominee Spencer Johnson for Seat 1-B.
Additionally, a Statesboro city special election is being held in concurrence with this general election, but the nonpartisan city race will appear only on ballots of voters who reside in Statesboro Council District 2. Loletta Donaldson-Elliott, Maleek Jones and Kathleen Keehner are all first-time candidates vying for the vacant, District 2 council seat.
The Statesboro Herald intends to post stories from interviews with Johnson and Simmons by this weekend and will be seeking fresh interviews with the Statesboro council candidates next week.
This week + 2 more
The County Annex, or specifically, the Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration Office at 113 North Main St., Suite 201, Statesboro, remains the county's only early voting site this first week, open for that purpose 8 a.m.-5 p.m. each day through Friday, Oct. 16, and also 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17.
Advance voting will also be available at the same County Annex location 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, Oct. 19-23, then 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, and again 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, Oct. 26-30. (Notice that the annex is the only location for voting on either of the two Saturdays and that Saturday voting begins an hour later than weekday voting.)
However, two added, "satellite" in-person early voting locations will be open for a few days each, one for three days next week, and the other for five days on the third and final week.
GS 3-day site
A room on the Georgia Southern University campus, in the Russell Union building at 85 Georgia Avenue, will be open for advanced in-person voting during three days only, Tuesday-Thursday, Oct. 20-22, from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. This on-campus location has been provided at general elections in some gubernatorial election years (such as 2026) and presidential election years (such as 2020) for more than a decade.
It is meant to be convenient not only for students but also GS faculty and staff members and others who work in the campus area and are registered to vote in Bulloch County, Jones said.
New Brooklet site
New this season, Brooklet City Hall, 104 Church St. in Brooklet, will be staffed for early voting in the county and state election in the final five days, Monday-Friday, Oct. 26-30, also from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
"This will be the first time, to my knowledge, that we'll be conducting early voting outside the city limits of Statesboro," Jones said in an earlier interview.
Just as is true of the County Annex, the Brooklet site will be open to any Bulloch County registered voters, since early voting locations are not tied to traditional Election Day precincts.
Friday, Oct. 30 will be the final day of early voting at both the County Annex site in Statesboro and the Brooklet City Hall site. Early voting, statewide, concludes with the last person in line at 5 p.m. Oct. 30, and there will be no voting on Saturday, Oct. 31.
Absentee deadline
The first day the local elections office staff could mail out absentee ballots to people who requested them was Oct. 5. As of Tuesday, 697 Bulloch County absentee ballots had been mailed out, with 75 returned to be counted and one canceled. (Usually when an absentee ballot is canceled, it's because the voter decided to vote in-person instead.)
The deadline to apply for an absentee ballot is Oct. 23, and these ballots can be mailed to the address where the voter is currently registered to vote in Bulloch County, to an address outside of Bulloch County, or the alternate in-county address of a physically disabled voter.
Absentee ballots voted and returned to the elections office by the close of polls on Election Day, Nov. 3, can be counted.
Final Election Day
For voters who do not vote early or absentee, all 16 of the county's traditional, Election Day precincts will be open for their assigned voters from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. on Nov. 3. Voters in Precinct 11, otherwise known as "Statesboro Precinct" are reminded that its voting site has been moved to the Jones-Love Building at Luetta Moore Park, 585 Martin Luther King Drive. In past election cycles that precinct voted at the William James Educational Complex, which is no longer available for that purpose.
Voters can access their location-specific sample ballot at the state My Voter Page, https://mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/ . They can also check their registration status there, but the deadline to register to vote in the current election, if not already registered, or to update registration name and address info was Oct. 5.
'22-like turnout?
If Bulloch County's daily early voter turnout continued at the first day's pace of about 1.7% of registered voters for all 16 days, that would amount to 27.2% during early voting, which wouldn't be far off the mark from four years ago. However, the Saturdays tend to serve relatively few voters here and, as Jones noted, the final five-day week often brings a rush.
In the last gubernatorial general election, concluded Nov. 8, 2022, Bulloch County had 23,628 voters cast ballots out of 44,927 citizens then counted as active, registered voters, for 52.6% total turnout. In that election, 12,638 of those voters cast ballots early in-person or absentee, or 28.1% of the active registered, and more than the 10,990 who voted on the final Election Day.