Hourlong voting lines in Cherokee County with 1 day left of early voting

CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — More than a million people have already voted in the runoff race for U.S. Senate.

At least 281,000 people voted on Wednesday, which would have been a record if it wasn’t for the turnout on Monday and Tuesday, when more than 300,000 people voted each day.

Channel 2′s Richard Elliot was in Cherokee County, where they were seeing strong early voting numbers.

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Over at the South Cherokee Annex, the lunchtime voting lines stretched nearly an hour long. The waiting time was down to 30 minutes by 4 p.m.

Nearly 13% of Cherokee voters have voted early so far.

Clifford Woods said the line was so long around noon that he wanted to turn around, but he stuck it out.

“I have to do something real good for this state here,” Woods said. “I got to vote.”

County Spokesperson Erika Neldner said that even with the heavy turnout, the voting process is going very smoothly.

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“They added some additional machines on Monday afternoon and Tuesday, so our wait times right now have really sped up, and we’re averaging as of 2 p.m. today, all three early voting locations are 30 minutes.”

According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, Georgia is seeing high turnout almost everywhere. In Greene County, 29% of registered voters had already voted. In Rabun and Towns, just over 26%.

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In Metro Atlanta, Douglas is seeing 22%, DeKalb nearly 21% and Cobb and Forsyth over 18%.

Larry Armstrong didn’t mind the lunchtime wait.

“It was longer than expected when we pulled in, which was a little bit of a shock,” Armstrong said. “But it was right around lunchtime right now, so people are taking advantage of it.”

There is one more day of early voting to go. Election Day is Tuesday.

Georgia set another record for early voting turnout

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