DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — Zeta disrupted early voting sites all over metro Atlanta Thursday on the second-to-last day of early voting. Many opened late. Some didn’t open at all.
The Douglas County courthouse is the county’s busiest early voting site. It was one of three in Douglas county that stayed closed all day.
From the signs, Deer Lick park certainly looked like an active voting site - until would-be voters encountered the locked gate, with access to the early voting site impossible.
"I’m probably going to go to the courthouse to see if I can vote there," said Bianca Perez when she drove up to the gate at Deer Lick. When told the courthouse was also closed, she was surprised.
"Is it really. Do you know why?" she asked.
The sites were closed because power was out. The county announced it was closing all five of its early voting sites early Thursday.
"I figured I’d go in and get my vote. But it’s my luck. It’s my luck," chuckled Laraine Littles, a Douglas County voter.
By early afternoon, Douglas County opened two early voting sites including one at the Dog River library – where a line a voters had formed by midafternoon.
But with early voting ending Friday – the unexpected precinct closures forced voters to make new plans.
"I don’t care where I have to go. I’m going to vote. One way or another I’m voting," promised Matt Decker, a Douglas County voter who'd gone to the courthouse hoping to vote.
"I’m determined to do it," echoed Littles. "It’s just a matter of finding the right time and not wait until (November) third, when I think the lines are going to be really long."
A county spokesman said the power outages in Douglas County cost the county poll workers – some of whom couldn’t get out of their neighborhoods – making it even more difficult to regroup once power was slowly restored.
Douglas County added two new voting sites Friday to help compensate for the lost voting opportunities Thursday. The seven sites expected to open Friday are as follows (the ones in bold are the new ones just for Friday):
- The Douglas County Courthouse, 8700 Hospital Drive, Douglasville, Ga.
- Old Courthouse, 6754 Church St. Douglasville, Ga.
- Deer Lick Park Recreation Center,2105 Mack Rd. Douglasville, Ga.
- Boundary Waters Aquatic Center, 500 Highway 92, Douglasville, Ga.
- Dog River Public Library, 6100 Highway 5, Douglasville, Ga.
- Church at Chapel Hill (opens at 12:00 noon, 5357 Chapel Hill Rd. Douglasville, Ga.
- Atlanta West Pentecostal (opens at 12 noon, 2960 Skyview Drive, Douglasville, Ga.
Statewide, as of 8 p.m. Thursday, more than 3.6 million people had cast their ballots. According to the Secretary of State's Office, just under 150,000 early in-person ballots were cast on Thursday alone.
So far, out of the state's total for ballots cast for the Nov. 3 election, 2,466,556 were done in person while 1,152,722 were absentee ballots by mail.