LAURENS COUNTY, Ga. — There is a week left for early voting and Georgia voters have come out in droves. The Secretary of State's Office expects to have more than 2.5 million ballots cast by the end of Friday.
For months, The Laurens County Republican Party has sent out news releases, urging voters to come out early. They say they hope to bank votes for their candidate, but they're also warning about cyberattacks and internet loss that they say could disrupt election day.
In July, a Microsoft outage impacted Arizona voting during the primaries, and other cyber attacks have impacted government agencies over the last year.
The line was out the door on Friday, with Laurens County folks hitting the polls early.
"Yesterday, we were right at 7,600 votes and we only have like 35,000 registered voters here in the county," Laurens County Probate Judge and Elections Superintendent Genola Jackson said.
She says with one more weekend date, a week full of early voting left, you should come out early.
"They may not be able to go on election day, so we encourage that," she said.
As the county Republican Party pushes for early voting, partly due to cyberattacks and internet loss, Jackson says there is no need for worry.
"There would be no way for any cyberattack to be possible on election day or any time," Jackson said.
She says outsiders can't to connect to the state's voting system, to impact your vote.
"It's impossible because we're not connected to the internet in any type of way," Jackson said.
She says this isn't just for the voters in Laurens County, systems are the same throughout the state.
"We can't do anything on any of that equipment without the Secretary of State of Secretary of State's approval," she said.
Earlier in the month Brad Raffensperger said that all equipment goes through audits.
"The county checked 100% of their equipment also with logic and accuracy testing, every piece is checked before it goes out that it's accurate, recording everything," he said.
He says these audits happen even after the election.
"We're gonna make sure that we have safe secure accurate elections," he said.
After the first audits, Jackson says equipment was sealed and it can't be tampered with. She says with the many protocols in place voters shouldn't worry about security.
"The most important thing is actually exercising your right to vote and we encourage everybody to please do that if you haven't done it," she said.
There are some other things that keep your vote secure, Jackson says their system is password protected through the Secretary of States office and all election workers take an oath not to commit fraud.