At a glance
• In-person absentee voting
Begins continues between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday. It can be done only at the Office of Voter Registration and Elections, 110 East Main St. in Cumming.
Click here to see the waiting times for advance voting locations.
• Early voting Oct. 27-31
The following locations will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.:
-- Cumming Public Library, 585 Dahlonega Highway
-- Sharon Forks Public Library, 2820 Old Atlanta Road
-- Forsyth County Public Safety Complex, 3520 Settingdown Road
-- Midway Park, 5100 Post Road
In addition, the Office of Voter Registration and Elections, 110 East Main St., will be open from 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m
Click here to check your voter registration information and polling location.
• Nov. 4
All 33 precincts will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
• Contact
For more information, contact (770) 781- 2118 or go online at www.forsythco.com.
Click here for a list of Frequently Asked Questions answered by the voter registration office.
Voter IDs
One of six valid state or federal government-issued photo identification cards is required to vote in person, regardless of whether during early voting or on Nov. 4.
Accepted IDs include a Georgia driver's license (even if expired), valid U.S. passport, government- issued employee, military or tribal identification cards, or a valid Georgia voter ID card will be accepted for in-person voters.
Absentee ballots sent by mail do not require photo identification verification. A valid photo ID is also not required to register to vote.
If traffic delays can be tracked on the Internet, why not voting lines?
Well, as of this week, they can.
Forsyth County's elections office has begun posting hourly updates of voting wait times on its Web site.
The wait for in-person absentee voting at the Office of Voter Registration and Elections is labeled with a red, yellow or green star, indicating a wait of more than 40 minutes (red), between 20 and 40 minutes (yellow) or less than 20 minutes (green).
"My idea for this thing is to give the voters an option to be able to vote in the location where the line is the shortest," said Gary J. Smith, the county's elections chief.
"I know that nobody else in Georgia is doing this ... I don't even know anybody else in the country that's doing it."
In person absentee voting will continue in the county's election office until close of business Friday.
Then the process will expand to all five early voting locations, which will be open Oct. 27-31.
Giving voters wait times, said Smith, should serve to increase the number of people voting early, already expected to be a record high.
In fact, more than 9 percent of the county's registered voters have already voted.
Thanks to a new state law, voters have been able to cast an in-person absentee ballot since Sept. 19. And in the past month, more than 9,400 voters have done just that. On Friday, a record 895 ballots were cast.
For those waiting until Nov. 4, however, the service will not be provided on Election Day.
"I would love to be able to do that," Smith said. "But for this election, I just can't figure out how to make it work. I don't have the manpower to be able to do it."
Smith said he hopes the site is popular, and the concept expands throughout the state and country for future elections.