What the numbers say
Ballots cast per day: early in person and mail
Official Georgia SOS statewide absentee voter file, accepted ballots by return date. Early in-person voting began Monday, Oct 13. The file is pulled each morning, so the latest full day is the day before the file date.
Alignment B: by early-voting day
Cumulative ballots (in person + mail) by day of early voting. Day 1 = Oct 15, 2018; Oct 17, 2022; Oct 15, 2024; Oct 13, 2026. Early voting started on a different date each cycle, so this lines up the start of in-person voting. All years from the official SOS files.
Alignment A: cumulative ballots by days before Election Day
Accepted ballots (in person + mail) by return date, official SOS files. Lines up the calendar countdown to Election Day; 2026 early voting started 1 day earlier than 2018/2022 relative to Election Day.
Race/ethnicity of 2026 early voters (unofficial)
Mail ballots returned by days out
Mail (incl. electronic UOCAVA) only, official files. Mail is far lower than 2022 after SB 202 and the end of pandemic-era mail voting.
Age of 2026 early voters (unofficial)
Largest counties vs past cycles
Data coverage & gaps
Sources & caveats
- Manual updates. The SOS file sits behind a bot check, so the box can't download it. The page shows the date of the last file downloaded by hand; it won't refresh until a new file is loaded.
- No race or age in the official file. The SOS absentee file has no race, sex or birth year. The race and age charts use georgiavotes.com, an unofficial site that joins the SOS file to the purchased voter list (not affiliated with the SOS). Its totals match the official file within a few ballots (552,066 vs 552,062). The box saves its summary daily, so daily race shares will build from Oct 16 on.
- No party. Georgia doesn't register voters by party.
- Two alignments. By days before Election Day (calendar countdown) and by early-voting day (since in-person voting started on different dates). 2026 looks weaker than 2022 on the first and stronger on the second, because 2026 is one day further into early voting at the same days out, and 2022 had more mail.
- Past files are final. Past counts use the final official files with the same rule as 2026 (status A, returned before Election Day), so ballots later rejected or cancelled are already excluded; 2026 statuses can still change. Official file totals differ slightly from same-day news figures (e.g., 2022 day 1: 134,901 in the file vs 134,045 reported then) because of late data entry.
- 2018 file labels methods "IN PERSON"/"MAIL IN"; mapped to in person/mail.
- Counts use STATEWIDE.csv only (the zips also hold per-county copies). "Mail" includes electronic (UOCAVA) ballots. 2024 was a presidential year.
Law changes that affect comparisons
Rule changes between cycles can shift how (not just how many) people vote early. Keep these in mind when comparing to past years.
- 2021 · SB 202: mail ballots can be requested no earlier than 11 weeks out (was 180 days) and no later than 11 days before the election; mail requests and ballots require ID (driver's license number or other ID); drop boxes limited to early-voting sites during voting hours, at most one per 100,000 active voters; a second Saturday of early voting required; runoffs cut from 9 to 4 weeks; no unsolicited mail-ballot applications from governments. In effect for 2022 and 2024; 2018 was under the old rules. Source · Summary
- 2024 · SB 189: eased voter challenges, set chain-of-custody rules and faster reporting deadlines for absentee and early ballots, and required tabulating from ballot text instead of QR codes. A June 2026 special-session law (SB 3EX) pushed the QR-code deadline to Jan 1, 2028 and left absentee and early-voting deadlines unchanged for 2026. SB 189 text · SB 3EX explainer