The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration decided on Monday to explore adding a second venue for early voting in the May 19 Party Primary Elections to increase turnout in the Oconee Northeast Precinct, which includes Bogart.
Board Chair Jay Hanley said he had been approached by candidates who are running for House District 120 and are concerned about turnout in the Northeast Precinct, which falls in that District.
Hanley did not identify the candidates with whom he has spoken, but he is a former chair of the Oconee County Republican Party, and Ward Black, Chad Paton, and KJ Allen Kendrick have declared for the May Republican Primary for that seat.
Suzanna Karatassos is the sole Democrat who has announced for the seat, being vacated by incumbent Republican Houston Gaines. Gaines is running for the Republican Party nomination for Congressional District 10.
In the 2024 election between Gaines and Democrat Andrew Ferguson, 48.4 percent of the vote came from heavily Democratic Clarke County, and Gaines won handily because of the strongly Republican vote from Barrow, Jackson, and Oconee counties. Oconee County contributed 17.5 percent of the vote, with 61.3 percent of the Oconee vote going to Gaines.
Hanley said that a second early voting venue–possibly in the city of Bogart–also could help increase turnout from the Oconee County Dark Corner Precinct, which is in the 121st House District.
Of the three precincts in Oconee County that are in the 121st House District, Democrat Eric Gisler, who won the special election for that seat on Dec. 9, did poorest in Dark Corner, which also had the lowest turnout rate and the lowest rate of participation in Advance In Person voting.
Gisler has announced he is holding a Town Hall meeting open to the public leading up to the beginning of the legislative session next week from 3 to 5 p.m. on Jan. 10 at the Community Center in Oconee Veterans Park, 3500A Hog Mountain Road.
May Primaries
Hanley said at the meeting on Monday that he had asked that consideration of early voting site for the northern part of the county be added to the meeting agenda.
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| Hanley, Ken Davis, Shami Jones, Gregg 1/5/2026 |
“I've been approached by some citizens in the Northwest area, the Bogart area mainly, and also a couple candidates that are running for House 120 this year, and asked that we look at considering an advanced voting site in the Northwestern area of the county.”
The goal, Hanley said, would be “to make it little more convenient for folks that live in the middle because it's a long way to travel down to Watkinsville to advance vote.”
The precinct that includes Bogart is called Oconee Northeast. It is the most eastern part of the most northern part of the county, but, given the county’s odd shape, it also is north and west of the county Administrative Building outside of Watkinsville.
Hanley said he had looked at early voting in recent elections and he noted that Dark Corner is the lowest precinct in terms of participation in early voting.
The Dark Corner Precinct is west and south of Bogart and of the Northeast precinct.
In the Dec. 9 election, turnout in Dark Corner was 21.4 percent, compared with 35.8 percent in Oconee South and 31.5 percent in Oconee Central.
Election day voting was similar in the three precincts, but Advance In Person voting in Dark Corner was less than half its level in Oconee South and Oconee Central.
Future Election
Gisler received only 27.0 percent of the vote in Dark Corner Precinct, compared with 31.2 percent in Oconee South and 37.9 percent in Oconee Central, the largest of the county’s four precincts.
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| Precinct Map: Dark Corner In Blue, Northeast In Gold |
Gisler won by only 198 votes, and a higher turnout in Dark Corner could have cut into Gisler’s winning number.
Gisler won by receiving 82.3 percent of the vote in Clarke County and 35.5 percent in Oconee County.
Oconee Northeast is in the 120th District, so voters in that precinct did not participate in the Dec. 9 special election.
Gisler is scheduled to be sworn in at noon tomorrow (Thursday) before Oconee County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lott at the Oconee County Courthouse on Main Street in Watkinsville.
Even before the Dec. 9 Special Election, called after incumbent Republican Marcus Wiedower stepped down unexpectedly in late October, Gisler had announced his plans to run for the Democratic Party nomination for the 121st House District in the May party primaries.
Mack “Dutch” Guest IV has announced his intent to enter the May Republican primary for the party’s nomination for the 121st House District.
What Board Decided To Do
At the request of Hanley, Sharon Gregg, Director of Elections and Registration for Oconee County, said she estimated the total cost to the county of holding early voting for the last five days before the election at $11,325.
Included would be $6,000 for staffing, $500 to $1,000 to rent space, $1,325 for equipment and logistics, and $2,000 to $3,000 for supplies and printing.
She said she was basing her estimate on use of three poll pads, eight ballot marking devices, and two scanners.
“If you move forward with opening another location that last week,” she warned, “you want to continue to open it for every election because you will have voters that are confused.”
“If you opened it this election and not the runoff, or the 2026 cycle and not the 25 cycle, that's one thing you don't want to have is more voter confusion,” she said.
Hanley asked that she look into the possibility of using the Bogart Community Center and the Bogart Library as well as other locations.
He also suggested she consider including the final Saturday of early voting, for a total of six days.
The Board voted to “allow” Gregg’s staff “to proceed with investigation of a potential secondary voting site” for the May elections, with a decision to be made at the Feb. 2 meeting of the Board.
Analysis Of Turnout
I gathered the election data for Oconee County for the last four elections, three in 2025 using the current four consolidated precincts, and the last election in November of 2024 with the previous eight precincts.
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| Click To Enlarge |
I “consolidated” the data for Nov. 5 of 2024 election to reflect the current four precincts in the county.
In the Dec. 9 Special Election, 11.2 percent of the eligible voters in Dark Corner voted on election day, compared with 11.0 percent in Oconee South and 9.6 percent in Oconee Central.
Advance In Person voting accounted for 10.0 percent of the Dark Corner voters in that election, 24.7 percent in Oconee South, and 21.8 percent in Oconee Central.
In the Nov. 4 election in 2025, which included the county-wide Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax as well as two statewide Public Service Commissioner races, only 9.8 percent of the eligible Oconee Northeast Precinct electorate and 6.6 percent of the Dark Corner electorate participated in Advance In Person voting.
In Oconee South and Oconee Central, those figures were 14.2 percent and 13.6 percent respectively.
In the June 17 Public Service Commission Party Primaries, 1.9 percent of the eligible Oconee Northeast Precinct voters used Advance In Person voting, and 0.8 percent of the eligible Dark Corner voters cast a ballot that way.
By comparison, 2.3 percent of the eligible Oconee South and 2.4 percent of the eligible Oconee Central voters used Advance In Person voting.
Higher Turnout Race Comparison
The three elections in 2025 were the first with the four consolidated precincts in Oconee County.
They also were elections with very low overall turnout rates.
The Nov. 5, 2024, election was held with eight Oconee County precinct locations, though early voting was held at the county Administrative Building, as was the case in 2025.
In that 2024 election, which included the U.S. Presidential race, 61.9 percent of the eligible voters in Oconee Northeast Precinct used Advance In Person voting, and 64.6 percent of the eligible voters in Dark Corner did the same.
In Oconee South Precinct, 71.5 percent of the eligible voters used Advance In Person voting, and in Oconee Central, 67.2 percent of the eligible voters cased a ballot via Advance In Person voting.
Final turnout rates in the four “consolidated” precincts were nearly the same: 85.2 percent in Oconee Northeast, 87.5 percent in Dark Corner, 87.3 percent in Oconee South, and 85.9 percent in Oconee Central.
In that 2024 race, the Barrow County contributed 8.3 percent of the vote in the 120th House District, Clarke County 48.4 percent, Jackson County 25.9 percent, and Oconee County 17.5 percent.
In the 121st District, Oconee County contributed 66.8 percent of the vote, and Clarke contributed the remaining 33.2 percent of the vote.
Video
The video below is of the Jan. 5 meeting of the Board of Elections and Registration.
Discussion of a second site for early voting begins at 1:50 in the video.
The meeting took place in the Commission Chamber at the Oconee County Administrative Building, 7635 Macon Highway, north of Watkinsville.
Note: This story has been corrected to add Ward Black as a declared candidate for the Republican Party nomination for House District 120. Black appeared before the Oconee County Republican Party in October, and I wrote about him then. But I neglected to add his name here. I apologize for the error.
1 comment:
I knew the GOP would come around to the idea of boosting voter turnout.
Thanks for posting, Lee, and belated greetings for the new year.
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