Local offices including county commission chair, coroner, sheriff and district attorney are in play, as primary Election Day arrives. All 16 of Bulloch's voting precincts are open 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Tuesday. But the 17 days of in-person early voting that ended Friday produced surprisingly low turnout.

A total of 3,174 Bulloch County registered voters cast advanced ballots using the touchscreen machines at the elections and registration headquarters during those 17 days, which included two Saturdays. According to other data obtained from county Election Supervisor Shontay Jones and her staff, 274 absentee ballots had been returned by early afternoon Monday.

That makes a total of 3,448 early voters, which would be 6.7% of Bulloch's 51,481 registered voters. If measured only against the county's smaller roll of 46,098 "active" registered voters — those who have participated in recent elections — the turnout rises to 7.4%.

Either way, that was a lot less voter participation than Jones was expecting, given the number  of local candidates, informally expressed levels of public interest and the shift to early voting over Election Day voting in recent years.

"This felt like a runoff as opposed to a general primary, especially one that we haven't had in four years that also has a lot of local opposition on the ballot," Jones said of the pace of early voting. "We definitely didn't vote in the numbers we expected."

Ordinarily, the logical comparison to make would be to the similar election four years earlier, which was also at mid-term for the state with top county offices on the ballot. However, as Jones reminds people who want to make that comparison, 2020 was not a normal year.

"Four years ago it was definitely different, with a pandemic factored in," she said.

Not only was absentee voting especially encouraged that year to avoid Election Day crowds, but also, Georgia's presidential preference primary, after an abortive early start, was combined with what that year became a June county and state primary. So Joe Biden appeared on the Democratic ballot and Donald Trump on the Republican ballot, along with other candidates for their parties' nominations.

This year, returning to the pattern of previous election cycles, Georgia held its presidential primary in March, entirely separate from the May 21 primary for state and county offices.

Back in the June 2020 primary, more than 7,000 absentee ballots were submitted  by Bulloch County voters, and another 1,819 Bulloch residents  voted early in-person. When the Election Day results were added, 14,862 county residents had participated in the election.

This year, the deadline for voters to request absentee ballots was a week earlier, as required under a 2021 state law. Only 353 were requested, and most have been returned, but any still out can be counted if completed and returned to the election headquarters at the County Annex — not a precinct voting place — before the polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Even a recent runoff yielded a larger turnout by in-person early voters than the current general primary, Jones  recalled. But that was Georgia's Dec. 6, 2022 statewide runoff in which U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, elected as a Democrat in a special election almost two years earlier, secured a full six-year term over a challenge from Republican nominee Herschel Walker.

"We voted 8,500 people here (at the County Annex in early voting), and that was in five days. …," she said. "And that's what we really kept (planning) on, something similar to that, if not more."

The current election, she notes, includes the first stage in the coroner's race that will lead to a new person in that office, as well as contests for "your sheriff, your D.A., your commissioner (chair), all of these countywide seats."

"So we just hope that if they haven't done it here that people will go to their precincts on Election Day and cast their ballots," Jones said.

Choosing a ballot

"I can tell you the number one confusion we always speak of when it comes to a primary such as this is people being aware of needing to decide what race, what office or what candidate is the most important to them," Jones said.

What she means is, because of the necessity to choose either a Democratic or a Republican ballot to vote for most of the local offices, it is impossible for any one voter to choose from the full array of candidates.

Coroner contest

For example, the contested portion of the race for Bulloch County coroner at this stage appears on the Democratic ballot, between two local funeral directors, Matthew Lovett and Craig Tremble. The winner from those two will be the Democratic nominee and go on to challenge the Republican nominee, Chuck Francis, a paramedic with a nursing degree who also serves as a deputy coroner, on the Nov. 5 general election ballot. 

Lovett, owner of Matthew H. Lovett & Sons Funeral Home LLC, has served on Statesboro's Planning & Zoning Commission and founded a local nonprofit organization. Tremble, owner of Craig R. Tremble Funeral Homes Inc., has 27 years of experience as a deputy coroner.

Also on Democrat ballot

Voters who wish to choose between Lovett and Tremble must request the Democratic Party ballot. Also on the Democratic ballot, candidates Daniel "DJ" Jackson, an Army veteran originally from Augusta, and Statesboro's own Elizabeth "Liz" Johnson, a retired insurance professional, are contending for their party's nomination for Georgia's 12th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. One of those two will go on to challenge the incumbent Republican, Rep. Rick W. Allen, in the Nov. 5 general election.

But voters who choose to the Democratic ballot will not see the races for county commission chair, sheriff or district attorney, because in each of those contests, both candidates are Republicans.

On the GOP ballot

Again, the countywide Republican ballot features contests for Ogeechee Judicial Circuit district attorney between incumbent Daphne Totten and challenger Robert Busbee; for Bulloch County commissioners chairman between incumbent Roy Thompson and challenger David Bennett; and for sheriff between incumbent Noel J. Brown and challenger Keith L. Howard.

Races within districts in the Republican primary for county commissioner seats and on the nonpartisan ballot (which accompanies both the Democratic and Republican ballots) for Board of Education have been detailed in other stories. 

The choice of a party's ballot in the primary does not limit choices in the November general election, but it does determine which party's ballot a voter will receive for any June 18 party primary runoff.

Reminders

Voters are reminded to bring their current or expired Georgia driver's license or other valid state, U.S. government or tribal-issued photo I.D.

Voters should try to vote in their assigned precincts within the county. Before 5 p.m. Tuesday, poll workers will attempt to redirect voters who show up at the wrong precinct to their correct one. Under current law, only after 5 p.m. and before the poll close at 7 p.m., a voter appearing at the wrong precinct in the correct county may cast a provisional ballot and have it count, Jones notes.