About four times as many people have voted early in Gwinnett County compared to the same point in the 2014 election, and are outpacing 2016 voting rates, spokesman Joe Sorenson said.
Between the time early voting began on Oct. 15 and when advance and satellite voting locations closed for the day on Monday, 31,102 Gwinnett County voters had cast a ballot, according to county documents. That does not count the voters who mailed in absentee ballots.
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At the same point in 2014, the last midterm election, about 7,700 people had cast an in-person ballot, Sorenson said. Satellite voting locations were not open until the last week of early voting in 2014, but opened on Saturday morning this year.
Satellite locations are early voting locations distributed throughout the county; the county office of Voter Registration and Elections in Lawrenceville is the main advance voting location.
The rate of early voting is also outpacing that seen by this point in 2016, but specific numbers were not immediately available.
By the time polls closed on Tuesday, 9,636 more people had cast a ballot, bringing the county totals to 40,736 in-person early voters, according to county data.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Wait times at the eight early voting locations Tuesday ranged from no wait all day at Lucky Shoals Park Community Recreation Center in Norcross to a maximum wait time of 45 minutes at 11 a.m.at George Pierce Park Community Recreation Center in Suwanee.
Early voting is up across metro Atlanta; in Cobb County, early vote totals are 30 percent higher than those in 2014, county records show. In the first week of early voting, people waited in line for up to three hours in Cobb to cast a ballot.
Gwinnett County has historically voted for Republican candidates; its board of commissioners consists entirely of Republicans, and has been all-Republican since 1986. But with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton winning the county by six points in 2016, Democrats are hoping to gain ground in the county on election day. Republicans have expressed confidence that they will be able to hold their standing in Gwinnett County.
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