Clubview, north precincts top Columbus turnout in early voting for Tuesday’s runoffs

Whoa! Columbus just had a surge in last-minute runoff voters, and the latest figures in the early vote showing turnout weighted toward the north side of town.

That’s to be expected, maybe, with Columbus so lacking nuance in its geographic separation of north and south, white and black, and Republican and Democrat.

No Democrats running for statewide office are on TV every night trying to edge each other out on the right, saying they believe in the Second Amendment because an Armed Citizenry is our Best Defense against Sanctuary Cities and so on.

Those ads have been running for weeks, so they don’t explain why people suddenly rushed to the polls this past Thursday and Friday. Some other issue must have caught their eye.

But, maybe they just figured time was short, and that’s why they came at early voting from the backside instead of the front.

Whatever the reason, the 110 ballots daily Columbus had been averaging the first two weeks was no gauge for the last day Friday, when more than three times that many came to the early voting poll in the City Services Center off Macon Road.

The total for ballots that day was 392, with 217 Republican, 159 Democrat, and 16 nonpartisan.

Thursday was among the heavier days, too, with 249 total: 172 Republican, 70 Democrat, and seven nonpartisan.

Every day last week topped what through July 13 had been the average: Monday’s total was 138; Tuesday’s 172; and Wednesday’s 169.

The three-week Monday-Friday tally since July 2 – with Independence Day off – came to 3,011, or 215 a day. The breakdown was 1,728 Republican, 1,168 Democrat, and 115 nonpartisan.

Most of those votes came from heavily Republican precincts on the north side of town, while fewer voters to the south chose to vote early.

I didn’t. When a neighbor asked if I was going to vote early, I scoffed: I’m not blowing 30 minutes driving to midtown and back when poll workers at my precinct are going to sit half the day Tuesday waiting for someone to show up.

Compare the early votes to the number of “active” voters per precinct – “active” being those most likely to vote – and you’ll see 236 of Wynnbrook Baptist Church’s 2,532 active voters have cast ballots, and so have 237 of St. Mark United Methodist Church’s 5,523 active voters.

But those didn’t top the number of early votes cast. The topper was St. Paul United Methodist Church, the Clubview precinct, where 318 of 4,891 active voters came out early.

Clubview does not have a district runoff, like the school board District 2 race between Mike Edmondson and Bart Steed, which Wynnbrook and St. Mark have.

It’s in school board District 8, where former representative Phillip Schley defeated incumbent Frank Myers on May 22, and it’s in Columbus Council District 5, where Charmaine Crabb ran unopposed for the seat Mike Baker’s leaving.

So the only local nonpartisan race on the Clubview ballot is the citywide council Post 10 runoff between Amy Bryan and John House.

Also notable might be the turnout for the Psalmond Road Recreation Center, which had 213 early votes, but its active voters total 6,019.

On the low side

The precincts with around 50 early votes or fewer were:

The Salvation Army Church, where 53 of 2,678 active voted early.

The Marianna Gallops Senior Center, where 48 voted early out of 2,577 active.

Britt David Baptist Church, where 48 of the 2,178 active voted.

First African Baptist Church, where 37 voted early out of 1,535 active.

Some precincts with low turnout in light of their active voters were:

The Cusseta Road Church of Christ, with 5,071 active and 65 voting.

Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Church, with 5,045 active and 83 voting.

Rothschild Middle School, with 6,268 active and 90 voting.

All precincts will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. Voters should remember to bring their government-issued photo ID, and remember they will be asked to choose a Republican, Democratic or nonpartisan ballot, and they can’t vote in one party’s primary and then switch to the other party’s runoff.

Sample ballots are online at Georgia’s “My Voter Page,” www.mvp.sos.ga.gov.

This story was originally published July 22, 2018 at 3:32 PM with the headline "Clubview, north precincts top Columbus turnout in early voting for Tuesday’s runoffs."