Polls will be open today from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in all Carroll County voting precincts except Fairfield, Hulett, Lowell and Whitesburg. Six Douglas County and four Paulding County precincts will also participate in the District 30 election.
The two candidates are Mike Dugan, a Carrollton building contractor and retired military officer, who won the Dec. 4 runoff for the Republican nomination, and Libertarian candidate James Camp, a Temple IT technician.
The election is to fill the seat vacated by Bill Hamrick, who resigned in September to accept a nomination by Gov. Nathan Deal to a Coweta District Superior Court judgeship.
Four candidates ran in the Nov. 6 District 30 special Republican primary election. The top vote-getter was former Rep. Bill Hembree of Winston, who got 48.4 percent of the vote. Dugan came in second with 24.3 percent, to earn a place on the runoff ballot. Dugan won the Dec. 4 runoff, with 56 percent of the district vote. Camp, as a third-party candidate, qualified early for the Jan. 8 special general election and did not have to participate in the earlier Republican contests.
Only 517 Carroll County voters, less than 1 percent of the registered 52,412 voters, took advantage of the three days of advance voting last week. That compares with about 1.8 percent who voted early in the Dec. 4 runoff, which was settled by a final turnout of 6.9 percent of district voters.
Dugan has been campaigning as a conservative Republican who shares the core values of most of the district voters. He has pledged to work for term limits, caps on lobbyist gifts and monthly town hall meetings.
Camp has waged his campaign toward preventing a Republican super majority in the state Senate, which he says will “take away the will of the people and put it in the hands of party bosses.”
All registered District 30 voters are eligible to cast ballots, regardless of whether they voted in the past District 30 elections. The deadline for registering to vote in this election was Dec. 10.
Voters will need to have a photo ID to vote. Acceptable photo IDs include: any valid state or federal government issued photo ID, including a free voter ID card issued by the county registrar’s office; Georgia driver’s license, even if expired; valid employee photo ID from any federal, state, city, county or municipal agency; valid U.S. passport; valid military photo ID; or valid tribal photo ID.
The winner of today’s election will be sworn into office shortly before the opening gavel of the 2013 Georgia General Assembly next Monday morning.
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