HIAWASSEE — The highest early voting turnout in Georgia isn’t in Democratic strongholds such as DeKalb County or the fiercely contested suburbs that surround metro Atlanta. It’s in sparsely populated rural counties where Republicans often reign supreme.

And while it’s hard to read too much into the spiking early voting numbers, they could mark a shift that holds long-range consequences in Georgia. After downplaying or largely neglecting early voting in past presidential races, Republicans are beginning to embrace the practice.

Nowhere is that more evident than Towns County, a mountainous area of roughly 13,000 people dotted with lake homes, riverside fishing escapes and rugged farmland that then-President Donald Trump captured with 80% of the vote in 2020.

Entering the final days of early voting in Georgia, more than two-thirds of the county’s active voters have already cast ballots. That’s about 15 percentage points above the state average and even further ahead of some densely populated Democratic-leaning areas.

“I don’t love early voting,” said Trump voter Anne Taylor of Tate City, a town of a few dozen people in a remote part of Towns County. “I feel like Election Day should be a national holiday. But I’m still going to do it.”

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Towns is no anomaly. Many other rural conservative-leaning counties, particularly in the northeast Georgia pocket hugging the state line with North Carolina surrounding Towns, are also experiencing turnout rates significantly higher than the rest of the state.

That’s helped drive new in-person early voting records with turnout in Georgia outpacing this point in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought a shift to mail-in votes. More than 3 million ballots have already been cast this cycle, and state election officials say the final tally could eclipse 4 million when it ends Friday.

This is not necessarily doom-and-gloom news for Vice President Kamala Harris. Even though these smaller counties boast higher turnout rates, they have far fewer voters than urban and suburban counties where Democrats thrive.

And turnout in the final week of early voting is picking up in metro Atlanta, which has the lion’s share of the state’s electorate. After a slow start, three of the four biggest sources of Joe Biden’s 2020 votes -- Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties -- are now outpacing the state turnout average.

But as more Republicans take up an early voting habit that Democrats have long embraced, it could change the nature of Georgia elections. For one, it diminishes the importance of heavy Election Day turnout. And it also frees up campaigns to spend more resources hunting for undecided or irregular voters in fiercely fought races.

“You’ve got to give Republicans credit. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They’re adapting to a very different political environment,” DeKalb County Chief Executive Michael Thurmond said. “And that means Democrats have to redouble their efforts.”

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Senior Republicans seem somewhat startled, even pleasantly surprised, that a practice once often disregarded has now become such a staple of their campaign strategy.

At a recent campaign stop, Republican U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Trump loyalist who represents this corner of northeast Georgia, boasted of the booming early voter participation levels in Towns and several other counties in his district.

“Is anyone out there going to give them any competition? I think we should have a contest,” he mused to the crowd, which responded with chants of “vote, vote, vote.”

‘Make a plan’

Early voting in Georgia was once so dominated by Democrats that Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon took to a sports analogy to help persuade football-loving conservatives to move away from their Election Day ritual.

He’d compare it to allowing a rival to run up the score in the first three quarters of the game, only to rely on a comeback in the final minutes. If Georgia coach Kirby Smart followed that playbook, McKoon likes to say, he’d be run out of town.

Left unsaid by McKoon is that strategy was driven by Trump, who devoted years to falsely ridiculing absentee and early voting as a vehicle for widespread fraud. At one memorable 2020 campaign stop in Atlanta’s exurbs, then-Vice President Mike Pence was even jeered when he encouraged the crowd to cast their ballots early.

This year, the Trump campaign is actively encouraging early voting, using much the same language as Democrats by encouraging supporters to “make a plan to vote.”

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At his rally in Gwinnett County earlier this month, digital “GO VOTE NOW” messages wrapped around Gas South Arena, and a parade of MAGA loyalists, including U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, appealed to the crowd to vote early.

“We may not like election season over Election Day,” GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance told an Atlanta audience a few days later. “But it is what it is, and we’ve got to use every method that we can to get out there and vote.”

Democrats are tracking a turnout boom of their own, and visits from Harris and other party leaders have focused on driving out more votes in the suburban and urban areas like Clayton County that lag behind their 2020 pace.

“Rather than trying to read the tea leaves, I’m just working nonstop to get out the vote and encouraging everybody to vote early,” U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ahead of a campaign stop at Emory University.

‘So relaxed’

The architect of the Towns County’s early voting spike is GOP Chair Betsy Young, an 81-year-old retiree who spends much of her time at the party’s local headquarters in Young Harris, the beloved home of the late Zell Miller, a two-term Democratic governor and U.S. senator.

From a strip-mall office cluttered with pictures of Trump and other GOP leaders, Young and other volunteers mapped out how they would exceed the county’s 60% early voting turnout mark in 2020. She marshaled extensive efforts to bombard the county’s most reliable voters to bank their ballots early.

“Four years ago, we were reactive instead of proactive. But now we’re being proactive,” said Young, who sounds wistful of her plans to step back from politics after the election and move closer to family in Virginia.

Greg Bluestein/AJC

She makes personal appeals to skeptical Republicans, pressing them to avoid potential logjams at local polling sites. Voters reported getting repeated texts and calls pressing them to get it over with. One local Republican paid for a massive pro-Trump billboard greeting motorists headed to Hiawassee, where the county’s main early voting site sits.

And for those who have yet to cast their ballot? Young organized a pro-Trump parade right down Hiawassee’s main drag. Not coincidentally, the route passes right by the local Democratic Party HQ.

When Young took a trip to the county’s busy early voting site the other day, she said, she came away with a sense of relief.

“Maybe it’s just me,” she said, “but all those early voters just seemed so relaxed.”

That’s how Robin Fisher described his mood after a visit to the Towns County election office. He said he had no high-minded strategic reason for banking his ballot early.

“I just wanted to get it done with.”