Clarke County voters are among those heading to the polls this Election Day. WUGA spoke with several voters about why they turned out to cast their ballots.
“I vote every election. I have to say, I’m pretty interested in the local, or the things that’ll be determined today, like the judges and the nonpartisan races, so I look forward to seeing the outcome of those,” according to Mary Songster.
Michael Songster also votes regularly.
“I vote every election, and so I’m here for this one, even though it was, uh… there was a lot of information. It was tough to kind of sort through it all.”
“I’m glad that this part is done” Songster continued. “And then, you know, it seems like many of them are gonna go to a runoff, and, you know, we’ll get another chance to see what everyone else thought and make that decision again.”
“To be totally honest, I was totally just burnt out on all the negative ads, and… to the point where it almost discouraged us both from coming to vote, but we did it anyway,” said voter Mike Rupert.
“Yeah, hopefully that there’s a wave coming and we can start to get the vote back to the people,” according to Mary Guay.
Polls close at 7 pm Tuesday evening. According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Election Data Hub, more than a million voters around the state participated in early voting, that’s 14 percent of Georgia’s active voters.
In Clarke County, 13,000 thousand voters voted early, a turnout of just over 18 percent. Voters are determining the next mayor, several commission races, board of education positions and the fate of a Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or TSPLOST.
