Early voting here in the Peach State is proceeding at an impressive rate. Early voting has been open since September 27th, with only one early voting site open in each county. Today is the first day of the “second phase” (my term) of early voting, when some counties open the rest of their early voting sites for this last week of early voting.

Cobb County (part of the Atlanta metro area) moved from one to five early voting sites, and I went to the one at the East Cobb Government Center. Voting began at 8:00 and by the time I got into line at 8:30, there were at least 400 people ahead of me, and possibly more. The line made a strange loop back into the side parking lot before it came back out in front of the building and down the grassy area between the street and the parking lot, so I did not get a good view of exactly how many were ahead of me.

The sheriff’s department was not only controlling traffic for those crossing the street from parking at the church or post office, they were also working to manage the line. They seemed a bit surprised at the turnout, given the amount of time that had elapsed since early voting began, but adapted well. With the cooperation of the voting supervisors and other pollworkers, the kink was removed from the line and things moved along smoothly.

In Georgia, to vote early there is a form that has to be completed that indicates the voters name, address, and the reason for voting early. The pollworkers directed us into a room near the polling station. There were about a dozen stations for filling out the forms, and that took only a minute or two to get in, complete the form, and get into the next line. From there we were directed to one of 6 stations to check our names on the rolls and issue our smart card for the voting machines.

From there, we moved to one of the about 20 voting machines. They were all full and I only had to wait a few seconds for one to open up. The machine functioned as well as any touchscreen machine would be expected to work, and I had completed my ballot (9 screens in all, about 30 races including national, state, county, and local offices, 3 state constitutional amendments, and local measures) in less than 5 minutes. I then handed in my smart card, got my “I voted” sticker, and left.

There wasn’t anyone doing exit polling at that station, but I made a few observations myself. First is the demographics of the early voters. East Cobb is a relatively affluent, white, historically Republican community. The makeup of the group in line seemed to reflect this demographic. At the time it appeared those in line were about 60/40 female, 25/75 retirement age, 20/80 African American, and 15/85 in business attire (suits or professional clothing). There were also a few who had their school age children with them, one of those I overheard speaking was a homeschooling mom who brought her daughter to teach her about civic responsibility.

This leads me to think that either the McCain GOTV effort has worked better than we realized, or there’s a huge change in voting habits happening here. My personal hope is the latter.

Second observation was about the pollworkers themselves. They were very professional yet relaxed in the face of the huge turnout. The normal set of pollworkers for this polling station are all retirement age, but this time there were lots more workers who were younger (including the pollworker who checked my ID against the rolls, he could not have been a day over 22). Its great to see much more involvement in the process from younger people. I didn’t observe any problems directly and the demeanor of the pollworkers indicated that they had the training and roleplay under their belts to handle the more common issues that may arise. This is encouraging, considering the anticipated level of activity on election day. Having the polling place in the same building as the sheriff’s office helps too, I’m sure.