35% turnout likely in early Georgia voting

Thousands of people across metro Atlanta waited in line late Friday night to cast ballots at advance polling places. They were the last wave of a huge statewide early turnout that officials estimated at more than a third of registered voters.

Deputy Secretary of State Rob Simms said he expected that by the end of the night, 2 million of Georgia’s 5.7 million registered voters — about 35 percent —would have cast an advanced ballot.

Jamie Gumbrecht / jgumbrecht@ajc.com

Allen Hedrick, 41, checks his cell phone while waiting in line to vote at the Fulton County Government Center on Friday morning. By 11 a.m., the line stretched around the building and the wait was about four hours.

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One county’s attempt to add yet another day of pre-Election Day balloting was halted late Friday as the exhausting final day of advance voting came to an end late Halloween night.

The Clayton County Board of Elections and Registration requested an extension of advanced voting from the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday afternoon. Board Chairman Bob Bolia said he stopped the process because poll workers were overtaxed.

“Workers were too tired and had already worked 12-hour days all week,” Bolia said late Friday.

Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Cobb county election officials all said they would not seek early voting extensions.

Atlanta officials had sent a letter to DeKalb and Fulton election officials on Friday asking them to extend voting hours and days. The two counties have had the highest number of early voters in the state.

Fulton County officials decided Friday evening that extending voting over the weekend wasn’t feasible.

“Logistically, we just couldn’t swing it. We have to devote our resources to getting ready for Tuesday,” said Fulton County Board of Elections member Harry MacDougald.

Simms said Friday that his office doesn’t have the power to extend voting hours. Individual counties can ask for extended hours, but their requests have to be cleared through the U.S. Department of Justice.

Georgia is one of nine states, along with some smaller jurisdictions, that must apply to the department’s Civil Rights Division before changing voting procedures.

Everyone got to vote

All metro Atlanta polling places were officially closed by 7 p.m., but the thousands of voters still in line were allowed to stay and vote.

“I have not seen anything like this in America,” U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat, said as he viewed the long line at the Fulton County Government Center Friday evening. “To me, this is incredible.”

Lewis, who shook hands with some of the 300 voters still waiting outside the building around 7 p.m., said he won’t vote until Tuesday: “I want to say I voted on the historic day, Nov. 4.”

Earlier in the day, Lewis and other Democrats held a press conference at the Capitol, calling on Secretary of State Karen Handel and Gov. Sonny Perdue to extend voting hours over the weekend, following the lead of officials in Florida and North Carolina.

In many places across metro Atlanta, voters still in line when the polls closed hunkered down, expecting a long night.

But by 9 p.m. Friday, some precincts had just a few dozen voters left to process.

Gwinnett County’s elections office in Lawrenceville had seen wait times of eight to 10 hours earlier in the day, but finished voting at 9:20 p.m.

At DeKalb County’s Memorial Drive Complex in Decatur, voters faced an estimated five-hour wait at 7 p.m. But that estimate turned out to be overly pessimistic; the last DeKalb ballot was cast at 10:45 p.m.

Dara Hill, 30, was one of the last people in line there at 7 p.m. She had her 10-year-old daughter, Denara, still in Halloween cat makeup, beside her.

Hill said she knew what she was getting into when she arrived.

“I heard this was one of worst [places], but every vote counts, and I want to be accounted for,” Hill said.

Besides, she said, she thought the line just might speed up, with county workers probably wanting to get home more than anyone, Hill figured.

Her wait ended abruptly. A county worker, noticing Hill was pregnant, moved her to the front of the line.

Nhykita Dawson, 24, of College Park, got in line at the Frank Bailey Senior Center in Riverdale one minute before 7 p.m. Friday.

“I have to work on Tuesday and didn’t want to stand in line too long,” she said. “But it looks like I’ll be spending my Halloween here. Who knows what time I’ll get out?”

As of 8:30 p.m., about 300 people were ahead of Dawson in the line to vote. The senior center, the last polling place still open in Clayton County late Friday night, saw its final votes cast at 11:32 p.m.

Some made new friends

Gloria M. Harris of Atlanta was the last person to cast a ballot at the Fulton County Government Center on Pryor Street at 10 p.m. Friday. She had waited nearly four hours to cast her vote for Barack Obama.

“I feel like I’m doing something,” said Harris, a city of Atlanta employee in the finance department. “The government is so far away from us. This is the only time we can have a chance to speak and we deserve better.”

Harris made a new friend, Wanda Jeanne of Atlanta, as the line snaked around inside the building’s ground-floor atrium. They sang songs, including old spirituals.

“Do you know ‘I Believe I Can Fly?’ Just uplifting songs to give people something to smile about. This has been a joy,” Jeanne said.

“We’re not facing any water hoses,” she said. “We’re not picking cotton….We have a choice. You can wait a couple of hours.”

Some famous people cast ballots at the government center too, including Jermaine Dupri and Tyler Perry. Perry, who voted earlier this week, said he was a first timer, poll worker Amanda Taylor recalled.

The last ballot cast in Fulton was at 11:20 p.m. at Welcome All Park, at the south end of the county.

Mark McShane, the last person in line late Friday night at the George Pierce Community Center in Suwanee, said this election “is a choice of two roads,” between “some serious socialist leanings and some conservative values.”

The 52-year-old Lawrenceville man began his journey in line at 6:45 p.m., with a wait time Gwinnett County elections officials estimated at five hours. About 11 p.m., there were about 100 people in line. The last Gwinnett vote was cast at 11:45 p.m.

Gwinnett spokesman Joe Sorenson estimated that between 20 and 25 percent of the county’s registered voters — well over 100,000 people — had taken advantage of advance and mail-in voting this election.

Coweta votes until noon Sat.

Friday was the last day of early voting for most Georgia counties. In Coweta County, polls will be open from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday. That county has had federal approval for Saturday hours since 1986. State law prohibits polls from opening on Monday, Simms said.

The main government offices in Gwinnett and Cobb counties will be open Saturday to accept only absentee ballots from those who would otherwise have to mail them in, officials there said. Gwinnett’s Lawrenceville offices will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Cobb’s Marietta offices will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Mail-in ballots must be received by county election officials by the close of polls on Tuesday. They may be hand-delivered. For the rest of Georgia, polls will be open from 7 a .m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Election Day.

Staff writers Julia Malone, Eric Stirgus, Megan Matteucci, Stacy Shelton, Craig Schneider, Shane Blatt, Michelle Shaw, Dan Chapman, Ariel Hart, Angela Tuck and Alexis Stevens contributed to this report.