Election officials: Voting lines under 10 minutes in most of Georgia
Voters had to wait less than six minutes in line in Fulton and DeKalb counties Tuesday morning, and many precincts in metro Atlanta had no delays at all, said Interim Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling.
The longest reported lines were in Stevens County in northeast Georgia, Dougherty County in middle Georgia, and Muscogee County in west Georgia, with waits between nine and 12 minutes.
“No drama, boringness. Those are the things we’re looking for today,” Sterling said. “So far, we’ve achieved those goals in the first two hours or three hours of voting.”
Many voters already cast their ballots during three weeks of early voting that ended Friday.
Early turnout surpassed 2.5 million, a record for a midterm election in Georgia. Most of those voters, nearly 2.3 million, cast in-person ballots, and about 234,000 voters have returned absentee ballots so far.
Election Day turnout could reach as high as 2 million.
About the Author
Mark Niesse is an enterprise reporter and covers elections and Georgia government for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and is considered an expert on elections and voting. Before joining the AJC, he worked for The Associated Press in Atlanta, Honolulu and Montgomery, Alabama. He also reported for The Daily Report and The Santiago Times in Chile.
