Georgia early voting shatters record 

Georgia voters have broken midterm records for early voting, with more than 2.5 million in-person and absentee ballots cast as of Friday, Georgia’s secretary of state announced Saturday. 

The state saw record first-day midterm turnout when early voting opened last month, nearly twice the turnout on the first day of early voting in the 2018 midterms, and registered an unprecedented number of ballots ahead of Election Day.  

On Friday alone, 231,063 Georgia voters cast their ballots in-person, a total 6 percent higher than the final day of early voting in the 2020 presidential election, according to a release from the office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R).  

Nearly 2.3 million have now voted in-person during the early voting period this year, and another 216,067 have voted absentee.  

“Georgia voters came out in near Presidential-level numbers. County election directors handled that demand with the utmost professionalism. They navigated a whole host of challenges and executed seamlessly,” Raffensperger said. 

In the 2018 midterms, 1.8 million Georgia voters cast their ballots during early voting — and 2.6 million voted early in the 2020 presidential election.  

Nationally, more than 39 million Americans have already cast their ballots ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to data from 45 reporting states and Washington, D.C., collected by the United States Elections Project. 

A recent Gallup poll found that more Americans plan to vote early or have already cast their ballots in this year’s election, compared to previous midterms.