The polls are officially open for the midterm elections, and Georgia voters are ready.
Nearly 189,000 people cast their ballots during the first day of early voting, surpassing the first day voter turnout during the 2022 midterms by over 50,000 votes. Tuesday’s turnout also set a new record for the first day of midterm election early voting, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The day also featured appearances from some of the biggest names in Georgia politics. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running for re-election against Republican Congressman Mike Collins, cast his ballot Tuesday morning at an Atlanta polling place. He also urged residents to proactively make a plan to vote and cautioned them not to wait until Election Day to cast their ballots.
“You don’t want to risk a bad alternator or a thunderstorm,” Ossoff said. “Go ahead and take care of things now.”
He also emphasized the importance of driving up the margin of victory for Democrats amid fears about potential intervention from federal officials.
“It’s up to citizens to use our constitutional rights to vote in unprecedented numbers, to vote early in person, make a plan to vote right now and ensure that we win decisively, so no meddling from this White House can foil the will of the people,” Ossoff said.
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a fellow Democrat, also cast his vote Tuesday as he appeared alongside Democratic nominee for governor Keisha Lance Bottoms in Decatur.
Prominent Republicans, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, also spent this week encouraging conservative voters to take advantage of the state’s early voting policies.
“Y’all, we need to try to win the early voting battle,” Kemp told attendees during a Monday campaign appearance with Republican nominee for governor Rick Jackson near Augusta. “We got to get out and get there early.”
Across all of Georgia’s 159 counties, voters are doing just that. Jeff Hamm, a 64-year-old DeKalb County resident, said he was motivated to come vote early to avoid encountering any issues or long wait times at the polls.
“Historically, I didn’t like to vote on Election Day as much,” he said. “In my community, we didn’t have as much support in terms of the infrastructure and the voting and the polling places. There were less machines, and so the wait times were increased compared to some of the other counties around Atlanta.”
Maanasa Javangula, a medical student who lives in Augusta, said she drove two hours back to Atlanta and stayed an extra day in the city in order to cast her vote in person. Not having a printer made it more difficult to print out and submit an application for an absentee ballot, she said, and has been wary of voting by mail since a previous attempt to do so was unsuccessful.
“I previously used to only vote on an absentee ballot because I didn’t go to college here, but I’m glad I was able to (vote in person) now,” she said. “Now that I had that issue a couple years ago, I prefer to just come in in person.”
She came to vote at the Milton library alongside her parents and brother and said she was particularly excited to cast her vote for Ossoff.
“We’re big Jon Ossoff people,” she said of her family. “We’ve always supported him. We care about immigration rights. We’re anti-ICE, we want better access to healthcare. My brother requires more healthcare than most people, so we want money put into that.”
But when it came to the governor’s race, voters from both parties seemed more motivated by disapproval of the opposing candidate than by enthusiasm for their own candidate of choice.
Sarah Roelle, a 47-year-old stay-at-home mom, said she was most concerned about voter integrity and lowering taxes. She cast her vote for Jackson, citing concerns about how Bottoms would govern the state.
“I don’t feel like Keisha did a very good job as a mayor,” she said. “That definitely swayed me big time.”
Jane Uwhubetine, a 37-year-old management consultant and DeKalb County resident, said she was excited to cast her vote for Ossoff, citing his strong presence in the community and his responsiveness to the needs of his constituents. She cast her vote for Bottoms in the governor’s race but expressed less enthusiasm about her candidacy.
“I was here when she was mayor. I think that she did some things well,” she said. “I think there were issues, call it kind of a tough hand. But also in this case, I really don’t like Rick Jackson, so that was part of it as well.”
Sheila Livingston, an 83-year-old Roswell resident, said most of what she knew about Jackson was from the ads the billionaire healthcare executive has been running on TV. But she said she was optimistic that he would do a better job than Bottoms on issues that matter to her, such as keeping taxes low and keeping the city safe.
“I didn’t like her when she was in office, and I still don’t like her,” Livingston said. “So I didn’t have much of a choice.”
