There was a big rush of early voting last Friday, but overall fewer DeKalb County voters cast early ballots in this presidential election compared to 2008.
Here are the numbers from the DeKalb Office of Voters Registration and Elections website. Early votes include mail-in votes and ballots cast in person.
- 161,095 - Early votes cast through Friday, Nov. 2, for the 2012 General Election.
- 173,064 -- Early votes for the 2008 General Election.
Patch asked DeKalb Elections Director Mary France Weeks why the numbers changed. This is her emailed response.
Actually, the daily numbers were higher this year. In 2008, early voting lasted 45 days – in 2012 it was reduced to 21 days.
In 2008, we only had one early voting site for the full 45 day period – our main office on Memorial Drive. In 2012, we had two areas in our main office, plus two additional satellite sites for the full 21-day period.
In 2008, we added five additional sites for the week prior to the election – for a total of 6. In 2012, we added three additional sites for a total of 7.
A little more than 34 percent of registered DeKalb voters voted early this year.
Early voting speeded up on Friday, as evidenced by longer lines. All the early polls had more votes Friday than any other day of the week. (See attached PDF).
Here's how the number of registered voters is distributed in DeKalb:
- DeKalb County total - 470,605.
- Unincorporated (includes Tucker) - 348,748.
- Atlanta - 24,369.
- Avondale Estates - 2,320.
- Brookhaven - 28,561.
- Chamblee - 6,957.
- Clarkston - 3,165.
- Decatur - 16,096.
- Doraville - 3,735.
- Dunwoody - 30,687.
- Lithonia - 1,232.
- Pine Lake - 609.
- Stone Mountain - 4,126.