MOULTRIE, Ga. — Statewide, elections officials have applauded “record-breaking” turnout for early voting.

“Georgia voters exceeded expectations on Friday, shattering the 2.5M mark for ballots cast prior to Election Day,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office said in a Saturday press release.

The release said 2,288,889 voters cast ballots in person during early voting. The same release said there had been 216,067 mail-in absentee ballots, but it didn’t specify if that was how many had been mailed to voters or how many had been returned. The deadline for local officials to mail the ballots was Oct. 28, but they can be returned until 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Together those two voting figures total 2,504,956.

Those numbers are significantly more than the midterm election in 2018, when 1.89 million people took advantage of in-person early voting, and they approach the 2.69 million voters who cast ballots early in 2020.

Colquitt County Voter Registrar Paula McCullough said early voting turnout has been strong here, but more ballots were cast early in 2018.

When early voting ended Friday, 5,992 Colquitt Countians had voted in person. McCullough said she’d mailed 557 absentee ballots.

In 2018, though, 6,084 Colquitt Countians had voted in person during early voting, and her office had mailed out 569 absentee ballots.

State law specifies three weeks of early voting, which in this election was Oct. 17 to Nov. 4, including two Saturdays, Oct. 22 and 29. Early voting in 2018 was also three weeks long but included only one Saturday voting day.

McCullough said this year’s total might have been higher with an additional Saturday voting day.

“There’s a lot of people coming up here today asking where early voting is,” she said on Monday.

On Tuesday, voters who haven’t already cast early ballots can vote at their normal precincts. If you’re not sure where that is, visit https://mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/ for more information. Those polling places will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The Moultrie Observer’s website, www.moultrieobserver.com, will report local election results as they come in Tuesday night, along with Associated Press coverage of state races.