This Monday, April 20, is an important deadline for would-be Georgia voters who aren't registered to vote in their current home county or have changed their address or name. It's the last day to register or update before the May 19 primary, for which the early voting opportunity opens April 27.
"I think the biggest thing people really need to look at is if they have updated or changed their address because April 20 is the registration cutoff date," said Bulloch County Elections Supervisor Shontay Jones. "Unfortunately, sometimes people think that when they go and change their address at the post office that we'll get the changes from there."
But to be clear, that doesn't happen.
"So it will be very important if they want to definitely be able to vote on some of these local candidates that are by district to make sure they're in their current district," she said.
The place to register or update registration in person in Bulloch County is the Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration Office, in the County Annex at 113 North Main St., Suite 201, Statesboro. Its phone number is 912-764-6502; email addresses elections@bullochcounty.net and voterregistrar@bullochcounty.net.
That location in the County Annex will also be the one place where in-person early voting will be conducted for this election. It will be available for a total of 17 days, including 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday beginning April 27 and ending May 15, and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on two Saturdays, May 2 and May 9.
No-excuse absentee voting by a voter-requested, mailed-out paper ballot is available now, and the deadline to apply for an absentee ballot is May 8. For voters who do not vote early or absentee, all 16 traditional Bulloch County voting precincts will be open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, May 19, for their assigned voters. One precinct, the Statesboro or Number 11 precinct, has been relocated since the last regular county elections. It is now in the Jones-Love Building at Luetta Moore Park instead of the William James Educational Complex.
Because this is the general primary for partisan offices and also the nonpartisan general election, voters are asked to choose either a Democratic, Republican or nonpartisan ballot. The nonpartisan ballot, which features judgeships and school board seats only, is actually supplied along with the Democratic and Republican ballot to voters who choose either of those.
Sample-ballot access
Jones has prepared a generic sample ballot, accompanied by a poster with "Ways to Vote" and "Bring Your Photo I.D." information sections, which is scheduled to be published in the Thursday, April 23 edition of the Statesboro Herald.
All the statewide races that will be listed on that ballot are open to all Democratic Party voters or all Republican Party voters, depending on which ballot a voter chooses. But from a state representative race through county commission and school board contests, down-ballot races are only for the voters in certain districts.
Registered Georgia voters can go online to the state My Voter Page, https://mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/ and enter their first initial, last name, county and date of birth to view a sample ballot individualized to their particular set of districts. The My Voter Page also provides a means to check voter registration status and find your early voting location or Election Day poll location and pathways to register to vote or update your registration online or apply for an absentee ballot.
Crowded ballots
No attempt is being made to name all of the candidates in this story. They are a multitude.
At the top, the Republican ballot lists five candidates for U.S. Senate, all vying for their party's nomination to challenge incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff, who appears alone in that slot on the Democratic ballot.
But with Gov. Brian Kemp coming to the end of his two-term limit, eight Republican and seven Democratic candidates for governor are named on their parties' separate primary ballots. There are seven Republican and three Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and five Republicans and four Democrats running for secretary of state, and six Republicans and three Democrats for state school superintendent.
The Democratic Party ballot also features five candidates each for insurance commissioner and labor commissioner seeking to challenge Republican incumbents in November.
Five Democrats are also running for Georgia's 12th District seat in the U.S. House, whose Republican incumbent, Rep. Rick Allen, also faces a Republican primary challenger, Tori Branum.
The one state legislator from this area facing a contest is House Speaker Jon Burns, challenged by Effingham County resident Nathan Hooks within the Republican primary for the District 159 seat in the Georgia House.
Local contests
The most active county-level contest in Bulloch is the three-candidate Republican primary race in Board of Commissioners District 2 for Seat 2-B. Incumbent Toby Conner is being challenged by both Frank Bedell and Ted Redman.
That race could go to a runoff, and some of the statewide races with multiple newcomer candidates in both parties are almost certain to do so. The primary runoffs would be held June 16.
The only in-county nonpartisan race in the May 19 election is in Board of Education District 5 between incumbent Glennera Martin and challenger Jessica L. Jones for that school board seat.
In Commissioners District 1, Spencer Johnson is running as Republican to challenge Seat 1-B incumbent Anthony Simmons, a Democrat. But they will appear on separate party ballots at this phase, so that race won't be decided until November.
Despite a pending state-level change voters may have heard of regarding the removal of a QR code from the printed, scannable ballots, and demands for a return to hand-counted paper ballots, nothing is likely to change before new laws are scheduled to take effect July 1.
"Nothing for May 19 or June, to my knowledge, will change," Jones said Tuesday. "It will be the same equipment we voted on in 2025, same equipment since we got it in 2020."