Is heavy early voting a sign of voter fatigue?

We can’t be sure of the cause, but early voting is up across the nation, the state and particularly so in Middle Georgia. Early voting started on Monday, Oct. 17, and as of Wednesday (Oct. 26), 11,640 voters had already cast ballots in Macon-Bibb County. It also seems that the early voting site at Terminal Station — which was a well-kept unintentional secret — is secret no longer. Of those 11,640 ballots, 3,286 were cast at that downtown location. And what started off as a dribble — only 266 voters the first day compared to 1,165 at the main office, grew to a Wednesday total of 592.

In Houston County, 12,807 voters had taken advantage of early voting at one of three locations: The main Board of Elections office in Perry or Houston Health Pavilion and Central Georgia Technical College in Warner Robins. Already, with days of early voting to go, 16.3 percent of the county’s active voters have cast ballots.

Early voting is up all across the state. Secretary of State Brian Kemp released a news release Monday stating that “Georgia, voters have already cast 578,539 total ballots in the General Election set for Nov. 8, 2016.” That was already a 40 percent increase in early voting numbers over the same period in 2012. Wednesday, via Kemp’s Twitter feed, that number had jumped to 936,804 total ballots. Both numbers include advance in-person ballots and mailed-in absentee ballots.

Those numbers are sure to increase with Saturday voting coming up on Oct. 29 where the early voting sites will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

To our south in Florida, voters in the Miami-Dade area are reported to have 90-minute waits before they can cast their early ballots. Early voting in the Sunshine State began Monday. And according to a CNN report, voters there are motivated to vote early by their distaste for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

Since this election has been the most acrimonious in recent memory, is it passion or lack of for either candidate that is causing this rush to the polls? Are voters deciding to vote early to avoid the mass of humanity expected on Nov. 8 at their polling sites? We feel there is a different emotional driver at work here: They just want to get it over with.

Each election cycle seems to get longer and this one particularly so. We have been bombarded by the different directions a plethora of candidates have wanted to take this country for going on two years, and now, at least from the flood of early voters, it seems a number of Americans just want to get it over with and behind them. We couldn’t agree more.

This story was originally published October 27, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Is heavy early voting a sign of voter fatigue?."