ATLANTA — A record number of Georgia voters have cast early ballots in person for a midterm election, surpassing 1 million on Tuesday.

"We continue to break records each day of early voting," Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

Early voting started Oct. 13. By noon Tuesday, 1,007,015 voters had cast a ballot in person ahead of the Nov. 3 election, according to Raffensperger's office.

That is up by more than 12% from the 894,412 who had voted early in person by the same point in the run-up to the 2022 general election.

Including the 48,916 absentee ballots, total turnout was 1,055,931.

It is unclear whether Democrats or Republicans are the ones casting those ballots because Georgia does not register voters by party.

Democratic voters outvoted Republicans in the May primary, marking a reversal of turnout in the 2022 primary, when GOP voters had the larger numbers.

In May, Democratic primary turnout in the governor's race was up by half from 2022, while GOP turnout for governor fell by a quarter. The proportions were similar in other statewide races.

Democrat Stacey Abrams ran unopposed in the 2022 primary for governor, which may have depressed her party's turnout that year.

Raffensperger pointed to the elevated turnout Tuesday as evidence that voters trust the state's election process.

His message came nearly three weeks after James Mills, executive director of the State Election Board, a rulemaking body, sent correspondence to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking them to intervene in Georgia's election process.

Critics of the Republican-controlled State Election Board called the move a continuation of a false narrative of election fraud.

"There is no evidence of voting security threats or massive voter fraud," the Southern Poverty Law Center said after Mills sent his correspondence.

"The election denialists at the Georgia State Election Board are trying to sow chaos into the midterms before voting takes place," Kristin Nabers, Georgia state director of All Voting is Local, said at the time.

On Thursday, Carolyn Roddy, the election board member whose Sept. 28 resolution had authorized Mills' action, wrote a memo defending Mills after some board members complained that they had not had a chance to approve the correspondence before he sent it.

"The Resolution imposed no such requirement," Roddy wrote to her fellow board members.

Her memo said Mills had faithfully communicated the resolution's intent. The resolution raised concerns about outdated software on the voting machines, among other things.