Early voter turnout in Carroll County for the Nov. 4 general election has been consistent since opening several weeks ago, already eclipsing the number of ballots cast in last month’s referendum on the special purpose local option sales tax.

According to numbers from the Carroll County Board of Elections, 4,737 people had voted in person by late this past week, and the county had received an additional 485 absentee ballots through the mail, altogether representing just less than 10 percent of the total electorate.

“We’ve been very, very busy,” said Elections Supervisor Patti Brown-Traylor. “We’re very pleased with the way people are responding to the early voting. We feel it is going to help us on election day.”

With the extension of the window for early voting to 45 days in advance of the election, estimates from Secretary of State Karen Handel’s office suggest this election could break a state turnout record. The 2004 presidential election saw the highest turnout, at 77 percent of all registered voters.

Statewide, it is believed 85 percent or more could vote in this election. In Carroll County, such an estimate would have 47,000 of the approximately 56,000 registered voters going to the polls through election day.

For this reason, Handel’s office has set a goal of at least a quarter of voters beating the rush to the polls and voting in advance.

“Voter turnout is historically highest in presidential years,” said Matt Carothers, Handel’s press secretary. “We expect turnout to be high this year, so our goal is to have at least 25 percent of voters cast an early ballot in this general election, which would lessen the strain on the polling locations on Nov. 4.”

As a whole, the state is seeing early-voter turnout of just over 7 percent, with 420,145 voters out of a total 5.6 million already casting a ballot. That’s slightly less of a turnout than the county.

Although both the state and the county are less than halfway to their goal of 25 percent voting early, Traylor said Carroll County is likely to come close to that mark in the weeks to come. This coming week, she said, the University of West Georgia is planning to bus students to the sole early-voting location at the David Perry Administrative Building in Carrollton.

“We are anticipating the last two weeks to be our biggest weeks,” Traylor said. “I think our busiest days are ahead.”

To make advanced voting even easier, the Powell Park precinct in Villa Rica will be open from Oct. 27 through Oct. 31, the last day to vote before the following Tuesday when the votes will be counted.

Those who were previously registered to vote at the Victorious Believers Church precinct on Bankhead Highway in Carrollton will now be voting at Bethany Christian Church on Villa Rica Highway in Carrollton.