By Monroe Roark
Times Correspondent
A wild first week at the polls in Henry County was the start of what almost certainly will be a record voter turnout in the 2020 general election.
Early voting began October 12 at two locations – the election headquarters in McDonough and the Merle Manders Conference Center in Stockbridge – and almost immediately various social media platforms were filled with photos of extremely long lines and reports of voters taking a few hours to cast their ballots. Almost immediately, the elections board announced a special called meeting scheduled for October 13 to address the problem.
Four other early voting locations were not scheduled to open until October 24 for a special Saturday session, but the board took action to get them open by October 15. That meant voters had access to those polling places (J.P. Moseley Recreation Center, Fairview Recreation Center, Locust Grove Library and Fortson Library in Hampton) for two days last week and all of this week.
As of press time, all six sites are open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays through October 30. All of them are open this weekend as well: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday.
Any Henry County voter can participate in early voting at any of these places, but voters who wait until election day (Nov. 3) will have to cast their ballots at their respective precincts.
Why have the polls seemed to be overrun this early? At least one reason is additional registrations, which have soared this year.
The county elections office’s website indicates that 123,177 residents were registered to vote in 2012. That number increased slightly to 125,837 in 2016, but this time around it is up to 167,049 according to the U.S. Elections Project, a 33 percent increase over the past four years. The total votes cast in 2016 added up to 99,666 with a 79.2 percent turnout, so this year should see well over 100,000 voters showing up in Henry County.
By the end of last week, 35,258 county residents had already voted according to the U.S. Elections Project, a nonprofit website maintained by a professor at the University of Florida which tracks voter activity across the nation. A report posted to the Moving Henry Forward website broke that down further, stating that 19,484 people showed up at the early voting sites over the first five days and 15,774 absentee ballots were already returned and processed.
A staggering 38,869 absentee ballots have been requested this year, accounting for nearly one-fourth of all registered voters. Only 3,593 absentee ballots were received in 2016.
