GA early voting hits 1.78M as turnout outpaces 2022 midterm

Tanya mentioned the polling places out there. Early voting is happening right now all across our state. We're going to check in with our Eli Jordan right now, who's at one polling place in Stockbridge. Eli, any problems out there? How's the traffic been so far today? Traffic hasn't been too bad, Tom. And, you know, it's packed here. I was at the library on Ponce earlier this morning. It was crowded there, good pace going on, people going in and out to vote here at the Merle Manders Conference Center in Stockbridge in Henry County, well, this is a good steady pace of people coming in and voting. It seems to be this way, you know, many early voting places. Now, already as of this morning, 1.78 million Georgia voters have voted. That is 23 percent of Georgia's seven and a half million people, the population, and that's nearly a quarter of the population early voting. It's very, very popular. Now, early voting has outpaced the last midterms in 2022, but absentee ballot requests are down. Now, the absentee ballot request deadline ran out this past Friday, but of the 163,000 absentee ballots that are out there, 83,000 have been returned and cast their ballots. Now, I spoke to one Georgia voter earlier today, and here's what they had to say about early voting. Yes, I love early voting. I early vote every single time. It's super convenient, and when there hasn't been early voting, there's a line like out through this library because I vote here. This is my polling place if I'm not early voting too and there's a line out to the streets so I know several elections ago like presidential election where I waited in line for an hour and a half a couple hours so it's so convenient here you just go in you're in and out. Now estimates of the early voting say that 54 percent of those early voting are Democrat, 41% are Republican, and 5% are other or independent. But if you want to early vote and you haven't voted yet, and you don't know where, you can go to the Secretary of State's website. And you can also type in MVP, my voting page, mvp.sos.ga.gov. Again, that is mvp.sos.ga.gov. Tom? I love, Eli, how you spoke to that one woman said, you know, she loves getting out to early vote. She avoids the crowds on election day. She doesn't feel hassled running around. And I, and I, I want to think because every time I've gone out to early vote, this has been my experience anyway. Now it could be different in other places, but they're in Stockbridge. You know, the, the, the voting volunteer election officials are so good at getting people in and out of there. And not only are they so good, they're volunteering their own time. They greet you with a smile and they make it a really great experience frankly oh yeah oh yeah i mean you know they're taking time out of their own day these are people that are passionate about democracy and uh the right to vote in America and i know a few voting uh poll workers myself that are just very passionate about it and uh it's important to them to be out there to make this as smooth and uh as a process as possible for voting for our elected officials here in America Tom all right um we got election day coming up in just over a week Eli Jordan with early voters out there in Stockbridge this afternoon. Eli, thanks for giving us a look at the pulse of what's happening out there right now. Eli, thanks.