A record number of DeKalb County residents have registered to the vote, and they're rushing to the polls.
DeKalb now has 518,947 registered voters, up from 493,147 in April.
Meanwhile, more than 170,000 people have already voted early, mostly at 10 advance voting locations across the county. About 13,000 of those voters mailed absentee ballots.
The early turnout is already well over half of the number of DeKalb voters in the last presidential election, when 307,474 people cast ballots. Turnout was higher in 2008, when 323,564 DeKalb voters participated in the election.
“We expected this,” said DeKalb Elections Director Maxine Daniels. “This is right in line with the 175,000 who voted early in 2008.”
More voters are registered because the county’s population continues to grow, with about 735,000 residents, and because the state hasn’t purged inactive voters. If the state had removed inactive voters from the list, the county could have lost about 30,000 voters, Daniels said.
Friday was the last day to vote early in DeKalb.
On Tuesday, voters must report to their neighborhood precincts to cast ballots.
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