With four days of in-person early voting opportunity remaining and eight days left to return paper absentee ballots, more than 30% of Bulloch County’s registered voters have already voted in the Tuesday, Nov. 3, general election.
Adding the 5,001 absentee ballots returned and the 9,797 in-person early voters through Monday afternoon shows that 14,798 of the county’s roughly 47,970 registered voters have turned out so far. That exceeds the 13,651 total early and absentee ballots cast before the final Election Day in fall 2016.
In the first 11 days of in-person early voting this fall, 8,724 Bulloch County residents cast in-person ballots, including 526 who voted Saturday, the only Saturday for voting this season. That 11-day total was an increase of 14.3% from the 7,633 in-person voters in the first 11 days of early voting for the 2016 presidential election.
Meanwhile, the number of absentee ballots completed and returned to the Bulloch County elections office, 5,001, was already 365% higher than the total in the 2016 general election, when 1,074 absentee ballots were counted here.
Monday, which was Day 12 of in-person early voting, another 1,073 Bulloch County residents cast ballots at the two continuing locations, raising the cumulative total to 9,797 in-person voters.
“Sometimes if we don’t get here early enough we don’t have a place to park because the people are already lined up to vote,” Bulloch County Deputy Registrar Shontay Jones said of the employee parking situation at the County Annex.
That appeared to have eased up Monday, now that the annex is one of two early voting locations for the remainder of the week. The Board of Elections and Registration Office in the annex at 113 North Main St, and the Honey Bowen Building, 1 Max Lockwood Drive at the Fair Road park, will be open for voting on the new touchscreen machines 8 a.m.-5 p.m. daily through Friday.
Saturday, 299 voters cast ballots on the machines at the Honey Bowen Building, while 227 voters did so at the County Annex during the seven hours both locations were open. Saturday was the first day that the Honey Bowen building was open as an early voting site, but the 11th day of early voting at the County Annex.
Accessible site
The Honey Bowen Building, which houses the Statesboro-Bulloch County Parks and Recreation Department offices, has advantages for voters with physical challenges, Jones observed. It can be entered from the level of nearby parking spaces, unlike the County Annex with its steps and ramps.
“For elderly voters or voters that have trouble getting around or getting up the steps or getting in the ramp, that’s just an easier place to get into,” Jones said. “No steps, you pull up in that back parking lot. It’s just more accessible. … We were letting people know on Friday that that location was opening up.”
With more room inside, the Honey Bowen location also has eight touchscreen voting machines set up and all in use, while just four are in use at the annex because of social distancing requirements.
No lines of voters were visible at midday Monday outside either location. The two sites had been roughly splitting the voting traffic through the morning, when 299 people voted at the annex and 227 at Honey Bowen before noon.
An early voting location in the Russell Union building on the Georgia Southern University campus opened Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week, contributing 2,044 in-person voters to Bulloch County’s total. Those were the only three days planned at that location, which will not reopen this week.
Incidentally, the number of voters at the on-campus location was slightly lower than in the 2016 presidential election, when 2,081 ballots were cast there. Jones provided the detailed local data used in this story.
Voting deadlines
In-person early voting ends at 5 p.m. Friday statewide as election officials prepare for the Tuesday, Nov. 3, traditional Election Day. Bulloch County’s 16 precincts will be open 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Mailed-out absentee ballots must be returned to arrive by mail at the Bulloch County elections office by the close of polls on Election Day, 7 p.m. Nov. 3, brought into the elections office or deposited in one of the two drop boxes.
But a court order that would have allowed ordinary absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 to be counted if they arrived at Georgia election offices by the following Friday was stayed by another judge. So the 7 p.m. Tuesday deadline still applies for all absentee ballots except overseas and military absentees, which must be counted if they arrive up to three days after the election, as has been the case for many years.
One of the drop boxes is inside the elections office lobby. The other – the only one available 24 hours a day, seven days a week – is outdoors on the edge of the County Annex parking lot, near the base of the cell tower at the county commissioners’ wing. It resembles a curbside mailbox.
Both drop boxes are locked down and monitored by video cameras. Together, they have been receiving about 100 absentee ballots daily, one of the staff members who collect these ballots told Jones.
State and national
Early voting for the 2020 general election, in person and by mail, has far exceeded that in 2016 presidential election statewide and nationally.
As of 5 p.m. Monday, 2,946,405 Georgia voters had cast ballots, compared to 1,333,167 as of Oct. 30, 2016, which was eight days before Election Day that year, the Secretary of State’s Office reported. That is a more than 120% increase in turnout between comparable points in the two elections.
This year’s number of Georgia early in-person ballots cast as of Monday, 1,945,817, was over 50% more than the 1,205,088 cast at the same point in 2016. But the percentage increase in mailed out absentee ballots cast has been much greater, over 650%, since 1,000,588 have been completed and returned, statewide, as of Monday, compared to 128,079 as of on Oct. 30, 2016.
The Associated Press reported Monday that nationwide, more people had voted, with eight days to go, than voted early or absentee in the 2016 election