BIBB COUNTY, Ga. — We're less than a week away from the January 5 U.S. Senate runoff election and Georgians have broken the state's runoff turnout record during early voting.
The previous record was back in 2008 when 2.1 million voters cast a ballot statewide.
According to the Secretary of State's Office, more than 2.5 million Georgians have voted so far, and that includes in-person and absentee voters.
Wednesday marked the last day of early voting in Bibb County, but Thursday is the last day in Houston County.
Mike Kaplan with the Bibb County Board of Elections says about 22,000 early voters showed up in person and there were about 20,000 absentee voters.
He says they're prepared for a large turnout next Tuesday, just like November's election.
"We anticipate a big crowd on Tuesday, and we'll be ready to start at 7 a.m.," Kaplan said.
Andy Holland with the Houston County Board of Elections says so far about 25,000 people voted in person, with around 16,000 voting absentee.
He says opening several early voting locations at once made a difference.
"Opening those three precincts all at once, I think that made the biggest impact on spreading out the people, giving them more opportunity cutting down on the line," Holland said.
Both Kaplan and Holland say they're prepared for a smooth Election Day.
"It's not very much data, we only have three races and so the voting should go very quickly. In the general election, we had 17,000 people vote live, and so we'll see how many people show up on Tuesday," Kaplan said.
"I'm not sure what we're going to see on Election Day, what numbers we'll actually end up with, but I do know that we are definitely upped our poll worker numbers and our equipment numbers compared to what we would kind of usually plan for runoff election," Holland said.
Both counties expect to report final results on Election Night.