Advertisements from the Georgia secretary of state’s office are promoting absentee voting and early voting to ease the load at the polls on a packed Election Day.
The ads will run statewide through mid-October on TV, Georgia Public Broadcasting and online.
Ads encouraging absentee voting are already on the air, featuring images of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, voters, poll workers, a mail truck and time-lapsed Georgia skylines.
The ads show a message saying “Go to securevotega.com to request an absentee ballot.” The secretary of state’s securevotega.com website links to the state’s new absentee ballot request site at ballotrequest.sos.ga.gov.
The first batch of absentee ballots for the presidential election are scheduled to be mailed this week. Any registered voter in Georgia is eligible to request an absentee ballot in advance of the Nov. 3 election.
The other ad tells viewers “Early voting begins October 12th,” with the date underlined for emphasis. That ad will begin airing one day before the start of early voting, which lasts three weeks across the state.
Election officials are expecting record turnout that could exceed 5 million out of 7.4 million registered Georgia voters.
Diverting voters to absentee and early voting could help reduce the number of voters on Election Day.
During the state’s primary, 49% of voters returned absentee ballots, with 37% at polling places on June 9 and 14% casting ballots during in-person early voting.
The advertising campaign is funded through $4 million in federal elections money distributed to Georgia through the Help America Vote Act.
You can watch the absentee voting ad by clicking here. The early voting ad is available here.
