As this Tuesday, Nov. 3, final Election Day dawns, nearly 27% of Bulloch County's active, registered voters, and more than 37.5% of Georgia's voters statewide, have already cast early or absentee ballots. Now, precinct polling places will be open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Tuesday for those who haven't voted yet.

That includes 16 traditional precinct polls in Bulloch County. Of course, the Election Day process is a little different from the early voting opportunities, since any voters who've waited until the final day are supposed to report to their assigned, very local voting places.

"The biggest thing that a person could do for (Tuesday) is check their registration (for their voting place)," said county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones. "We have seen more people, and we always do, from 200 to 300 depending on the popularity of the election, that come here (to county election headquarters) thinking we are their polling place."

However, after being the busiest place for early voting, the election headquarters in the County Annex is nobody's voting place on the final Election Day, unless they have completed an absentee ballot they were mailed earlier and need to return it.

But in-person Election Day voters should go to their assigned precinct to vote. To confirm their polling place, voters can contact the county office at 912-764-6502, or visit the statewide My Voter Page and enter their first initial, last name, county and date of birth to find their assigned voting place. The page can also produce a sample ballot specific to the voter's location.

Important choices

Together, Tuesday's voters and those early and absentee voters are deciding who will be Georgia's next governor and who will serve in the state's other elected executive offices and on its Public Service Commission.

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 nonpartisan Statesboro city special election is attached to this general election, but the city race appears 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.

Statewide, there are also three proposed amendments to the Georgia Constitution.

Early voting recap

During the three weeks of advance in-person voting, which included two Saturdays and 14 other weekdays, voters from anywhere in the county could vote at the Elections Office at the Bulloch County North Main Annex in Statesboro. But early voting there concluded with the last person who had got in line by 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30. At that time, there was a line of people who were let into the building before the door was closed.

"At the current moment we have a line of 100 or more voters waiting to vote," county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones stated in an email to news organizations at 5:16 p.m. Friday.

But the line was moving quickly, averaging about one minute per voter, with multiple machines available. The last person in line had voted by about 5:35 p.m., Jones later reported.

Additionally, two "satellite" sites had hosted advance voting for a few days each. On the Georgia Southern campus, a room in the Russell Union building hosted three days of midstream early voting, Oct. 20-22, accounting for a total of 394 early voters. Then Brooklet City Hall, as a first-time county early voting site, received voters Monday-Friday, Oct. 26-30, and a total of 811 voters were accommodated there during those five days.

In all, 13,124 Bulloch County voters cast ballots early in-person. Of those, 11,919 voted at the County Annex.

Incidentally, the final in-person early voting day was the busiest of the 16 early voting days in Bulloch County. Between 8 a.m. and about 5:35 p.m. Friday, 1,498 people voted using the touchscreen-to-printer devices at the two sites then in operation, including 1,256 voters at the County Annex in Statesboro and 242 at Brooklet City Hall.

Meanwhile, although Oct. 23 was the deadline for voters to file requests for mailed absentee ballots, those that were issued by Bulloch County and received by voters can still be counted if completed and returned to the elections office in the County Annex by the close of polls at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

However, no other voting will be taking place Tuesday at that location. Again, Election Day voters must vote in their assigned precincts, not at the election headquarters.

As of 1:34 p.m. Monday, 731 absentee ballots had been returned and accepted in Bulloch County, out of 915 issued.

So, the county's total number of participating voters, as of midafternoon Friday, was 13,855, including both the 13,124 early in-person and the 731 who had returned absentee ballots. This amounted to 26.8% of Bulloch County's 51,756 "active" voters, as reported on the Election Data Hub maintained online by the Georgia Secretary of State's Office.

At that point on Monday afternoon, the Election Data Hub showed that more than 2.83 million of Georgia's more than 7.51 million "active" voters had cast early or absentee ballots, for a statewide early turnout of 37.6%.

The state hub included a map of county early turnout percentages, which ranged from just 17.1% in Chattahoochee County directly south of Columbus-Muscogee to 50% in Oconee County just south of Athens.

In Bulloch County there are areas where citizens still prefer to vote on the traditional Election Day, Jones observed, so Tuesday's turnout could nearly equal that of the lengthy early voting period.

In the last general election in a gubernatorial election year, 2022, Bulloch's early voting percentage was 28.1% of active, registered voters. With the final Election Day added, total turnout reached 52.6%.

State amendments

The statewide portion of Tuesday's ballot ends with three proposed amendments to the Constitution of Georgia.

Amendment 1 would increase the maximum size tract eligible for a capped "conservation use" property tax valuation, such as for farmland, from 2,000 acres to 4,000 acres. Amendment 2 would require that probate judges be elected in nonpartisan elections. Amendment 3 would authorize the General Assembly to dedicate existing state revenue, including some money reallocated from other funds, to a permanent fund for the expansion, maintenance and operation of 9-1-1 systems. Voters choose "yes" or "no" to each.

Jones and the local Election Board have had a generic sample ballot published in two recent editions of the Statesboro Herald. Most recently, the ballot appeared on page 12-A of the Thursday, Oct. 29, print and e-edition.

That sample ballot includes all of the statewide candidates and proposed amendments, the race for the Georgia's 12th District U.S. House seat between Republican incumbent Rep. Rick Allen and Democratic nominee Ceretta Smith, and — relevant only for residents of specific districts — the Seat 1-B Bulloch County commissioner race and District 2 Statesboro City Council contest.

Bulloch County’s Nov. 3, 2026, sample ballot

Unopposed local candidates also appear on the sample ballot, and the published sample ballot page includes lists of the 16 Bulloch County precinct voting locations and the forms of photo I.D. accepted for voter identification under Georgia law.