With 10 days of early voting left, more than 11,000 Maconites have cast their ballots

More than 11,000 people have cast their votes in Bibb County for the Nov. 3 election, and early voting lasts almost another two weeks.

More people voted in the first week of early voting in Bibb County than they did for all of early voting for the runoff election in August and the primary election in June.

Macon-Bibb County had 9,369 votes cast in the first week of early voting for the November election while 9,359 votes were cast for early voting in the August election and 5,906 people voted early in the June election, according to the Macon-Bibb County Board of Elections.

After the polls closed on Monday, Bibb County had a total of 11,401 ballots cast. Board of Elections Chair Mike Kaplan said the total amount of early votes is around 20% greater than the total amount of early votes in the 2016 election, which was 9,440 votes.

Wait down at early voting locations

Bibb County voters saw long lines on the first day of early voting, especially at the Board of Elections office, where most people went.

The Elaine Lucas Senior Center and Theron Ussery Recreation Center opened for early voting for the first time Oct. 12, and the senior center only had a few issues with the poll pads at the start of the day, according to a Telegraph article.

Although people had to wait anywhere from one to three hours at the beginning of the day on the first day of early voting, the lines were down to around a 30 minute wait towards the end of the day.

The lines have remained relatively short over the past week with around a 40 minute wait at the Board of Elections and anywhere from no wait to a 20 minute wait at the other two locations, Kaplan said.

Early voting ends Oct. 30

The three early voting locations will continue to be open 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, and on Saturday, Oct. 24, the polls will be open 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Bibb County has received around 12,000 absentee ballots out of the 24,072 absentee ballots that were requested, Kaplan said.

Bibb County has started processing the absentee ballots under a new Georgia rule passed Monday.

The Georgia State Board of Elections ruled Monday that county offices were allowed to start opening absentee ballots and scanning them 15 days prior to the election, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article.

Although the absentee ballots cannot be tabulated until polls close on Election Day, scanned votes will be stored on optical scanning computers, like how the early in-person votes are stored to be counted on Election Day.

Macon-Bibb County has two absentee ballot drop boxes: one at the Board of Elections office and one in front of the Bibb County Courthouse on the Mulberry Street side.

This story was originally published October 20, 2020 at 9:28 AM.