Gwinnett County exceeded its total voter turnout from 2016 before polls even opened for Election Day.
Early in-person voting ended Friday and as of Saturday evening, 334,993 ballots have been cast and accepted by the county via mail-in absentee votes and in-person early votes combined, according to election department records. In 2016, 332,149 votes were cast by mail, in early voting and on Election Day.
Gwinnett County’s 2020 early vote total is nearly triple that of 2016, with 218,960 ballots cast by the end of the day Friday. By the end of the day Saturday, 115,189 mail-in absentee ballots had been accepted. Of Gwinnett’s more than 581,000 voters, 58% have already cast a ballot.
In 2016, there were 58,708 early votes cast, then a record for the county. That record has been shattered with an increase of more than 270% from one presidential election year to the next. Mail-in absentee votes continue to roll in, but they’ve already reached a total more than five times that of 2016′s 18,776.
The increase in in-person early voting and absentee by mail far outpaces the growth of Gwinnett’s electorate between 2016 and 2020. There were 430,935 active registered voters in 2016 and there are 581,484 now — about 35% more. The county population grew by about 4.6% during the same time period.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led many more people to seek out early and mail voting in order to avoid large Election Day crowds and guarantee their ballots are received and counted. Gwinnett, like counties across the country, has had to make adjustments to its election processes to keep voters and poll workers safe during the pandemic. Social distancing measures mean fewer people inside each polling place at a time, which leads to slower-moving lines. The county expanded its early voting locations and hours, and added ballot drop boxes.
The early vote was not without issues; there were lines at some locations that lasted eight hours on the first two days of early voting. Issues with state voting software, necessary social distancing inside polling places and high turnout were all cited as reasons for the long lines, and wait times were reduced drastically by the end of the first week.
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