Early voting in Polk County has been quite active considering the upcoming election is a primary runoff with only one local race on the ballot.
As of the end of the day Wednesday, 569 early votes had been cast in Polk County, with 466 of those in person and 103 absentee paper ballots.
That is a decent turnout to this point for a primary runoff locally.
However, since Georgia has an unusually long span between the primary election and the July 22nd runoff, early voter turnout is not exactly setting the woods on fire, says Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
“Over 44,000 people have voted so far in the runoff and at this point last time we had about 66,000 voting in the primary. This is a runoff election and typically its lower turnout.”
Secretary Kemp said that money is starting to fly around in some campaigns, and Georgians will be barraged with radio and TV campaign ads.
He expects early voting will pick up.
“But I think with the candidates starting to advertise and people starting to refocus on the race, I think we will continue to see these numbers go up and hopefully we’ll have a strong turnout.”
Voters in Polk County will be deciding the next Superior Court judge, either Cedartown attorney Chuck Morris or Haralson County’s Meng Lim.
The Superior Court race is nonpartisan and will appear on all ballots.
Two statewide races are on the republican ballot.
The winner of the heated U.S. Senate runoff between U.S. Representative Jack Kingston and businessman David Perdue will face democratic challenger Michelle Nunn in November.
There is also a runoff in the GOP race for State School Superintendent, a post that will be vacated by John Barge who did not seek reelection in order to run for governor.
Mike Buck of Rome will face Richard Woods on the Republican ballot.
On the democratic ballot, a runoff for state school superintendent features Alisha Thomas Morgan and Valarie D. Wilson.
Early voting continues through the end of next week.
Here are sample ballots for the Primary Runoff: