Politics & Government

Voters Trickle In for Runoff Election

Candidates are expressing concern that citizens are not coming out to vote. What are the numbers from the Gwinnett County elections office?

Voters are not flooding the polls in Gwinnett County for the runoff election happening today, Aug. 21.

In fact, just 12,000 people had cast ballots as of 4:45 p.m., according to officials at the Gwinnett County elections office. That's roughly 3 percent of the active, registered voter total of 393,000, according to data from the elections office.

At 1:30 p.m., that number sat at just 6,300, or 1.6 percent of the total.

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Candidates hearing about the turnout sent last-minute emails to their supporters, urging them to head to the polls.

"Voter turnout is low, low, low," said one judicial candidate in an email to supporters. "Poll workers have not been seeing many voters at all, but voter turnout is expected to increase this afternoon."

Find out what's happening in Snellvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

It did increase; it doubled.

Although Patch does not have final figures for comparison, in the last primary election runoff that was held in a presidential election year there were 33,871 people, or 9.8 percent of registered voters then, who cast ballots in Gwinnett County, according to data on the Georgia Secretary of State's website.

So, if you have not made it to the polls yet, there's still some time. Polls close at 7 p.m.


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