After two weeks of early voting, 31.1 percent of Oconee County’s registered voters have cast a ballot, down from 33.0 percent of the registered voters who had cast a ballot at this point four years ago.
Included in the count of votes cast as of the end of the day on Saturday were 10,236 Advance In Person ballots and 531 returned Absentee By Mail ballots, for a total of 10,767 votes.
At the end of the second Saturday of early voting in 2022, voters had cast 9,391 ballots Advance In Person and 1,032 Absentee By Mail ballots, for a total of 10,120 votes.
The increased total votes cast this year versus four years ago reflects the fact that the number of registered voters in the county has increased by 1,794, from 32,806 four years ago to 34,600 today.
Not only has the number of Absentee By Mail ballots received decreased over this time four years ago, but the number of requests for those ballots also has declined.
The county issued only 917 Absentee Ballots this year, compared with 1,358 four years ago, with only 385 remaining unreturned this year. (One Absentee Ballot has been rejected.) The last day for requesting an Absentee Ballot by Mail was Friday.
By the end of early voting four years ago, 45.3 percent of registered voters had voted Advance In Person and 3.3 percent had returned an Absentee By Mail ballot, for a total early voting percentage at that point of 48.6 percent of registered voters.
Early voting continues through Friday, so the county has five more days to increase the rate of Absentee In Person voting from its current 29.6 percent of registered voters to the 45.3 at the end of early voting four years ago.
Only 2.7 percent of the registered voters have requested a Mail Ballot, making it impossible to match the 3.3 percent ratio from four years ago.
Comparisons
Average Advance In Person voting for each of the nine weekdays of early voting so far this year has been 990.3, compared with average Advance In Person voting across the first 10 weekdays of early voting in 2026 of 879.8.
Early voting this year will have one less day, because of the Oct. 12 Indigenous Peoples Day/Columbus Day holiday. That holiday fell outside of early voting in 2022.
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If that 990.3 average for weekday Advance In Person voting holds in the remaining five days of early voting this week, the county will add an additional 4,952 voters, bringing the total to 15,188, or 321 more voters than the 14,867 who had cast a ballot Advance In Person four years ago.
That projected Advance In Person voting of 15,188 would be 43.9 percent of registered voters, or 1.4 percentage points less than the 45.3 percent four years ago.
In the last week of early voting in both 2018 and 2022, voting has been lower than in earlier weeks, excepting on the final day.
Advance In Person voting will be open an extra hour in the final week, running from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. No Advance In Person voting will be held on Saturday.
It isn’t possible to know if that extra hour will increase voting, or simply cut further into Election Day voting.
The pattern of Advance In Person voting and Absentee By Mail voting so far suggests that the county is unlikely to exceed, and may even fall below, the turnout rate of 2022 of 68.7 percent of registered voters.
All Advance In Person Voting takes place at the county Administrative Building, 7635 Macon Highway, north of Watkinsville.
Voting By Precinct
Early voting at the end of two weeks continues to be dominated by voters registered in Oconee Central and Oconee South precincts, whose voters have easiest access to the Oconee County Administrative Building.
Construction on SR 316 has exacerbated the access differences.
At the end of the day on Saturday, 33.5 percent of the registered voters in Oconee Central had voted, or 2.4 percentage points more than the county 31.1 overall figure. Oconee Central is the largest precinct, with 55.6 percent of the county’s total registered voters in that precinct.
So far, 32.4 percent of the voters in Oconee South have cast a ballot. Only 10.7 percent of the county’s registered voters are in that precinct.
In Dark Corner, only 24.3 percent of the registered voters have cast a ballot as of the end of the day on Saturday. Voters in Dark Corner make up 13.3 percent of the county’s 34,600 registered voters.
At the end of voting on Saturday, 28.3 percent of the voters in Oconee Northeast had cast a ballot. That precinct contains 20.3 percent of the county’s registered voters.
Of the votes cast so far, 7.8 percent were by Absentee by Mail in Northeast Precinct, 4.5 percent in Dark Corner, 4.4 percent in Oconee Central, and 3.4 percent in Oconee South.
The overall county figure is 4.9 percent.
State, County Comparisons
Across the state, 23.5 percent of the Active voters have cast a ballot, either Advance in Person or Absentee By Mail, according to the Secretary of State Election Turnout Hub.
The Secretary of State consistently reports turnout based on active voters, rather than registered voters, even though inactive voters can vote and become active as soon as they do so.
The comparable figure for Oconee County as of the end of the day on Saturday was 32.7 percent, with 10,767 of the county’s 32,891 having cast a ballot either Advance In Person or Absentee By Mail.
That figure was 23.0 percent in Clarke County, or just below the state average.
Oconee County House District 121 is split between Oconee County (precincts Central, South, and Dark Corner) and Clarke County, and Oconee County House District 120 includes Oconee Northeast Precinct, a large part of Clarke County, and parts of Barrow and Jackson counties.
Turnout by the end of the day on Saturday was 19.3 percent of Active Voters in Barrow County and 19.2 percent in Jackson.
State Senate District 46 includes all of Oconee County and parts of Clarke County, Walton County, Barrow County, and Gwinnett County.
Turnout in all of Walton County at the end of the day on Saturday was 23.7 percent.
In all of Gwinnett County, turnout at the end of Saturday was 23.6 percent.
The parties have created databases of those who have cast a ballot by legislative district, but those files are not available to the public. Georgia does not have registration by party, but those party databases classify voters by party based on primary ballots chosen and other factors.
Athens-Clarke County Final Week Voting
All three of the legislative districts that include Oconee County are gerrymandered to split Clarke County and minimize representation of that heavily Democratic county in the General Assembly.
Oconee County, which historically has voted Republican, is used to help offset the Clarke County votes in those legislative districts, making the differential turnout in the two counties important in each of those three races.
Athens-Clarke County had very limited Advance In Person voting in this first week of early voting, held at the Elections Office downtown on East Washington Street.
At the end of that first week, Clarke County’s turnout rate was only 5.6 percent of active voters, compared with the statewide figure of 11.1 percent.
Early voting took place at three additional sites Monday through Friday of this past week and was at four sites on Saturday. The turnout rate now is close to the state average, though still far below Oconee County’s 32.7 percent.
Athens-Clarke County held Advance Voting on Sunday, Oct. 18, at its downtown Elections Office.
Early voting in Clarke County will be be at four sites this week and also will be held at the Tate Center on the University of Georgia campus on three days this week.
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