Early voting for the March 12 Georgia presidential primaries began this week, with polling locations across the state opening their doors on Feb. 19. Around 17,295 Georgians cast their votes on the first day, closely resembling the 18,000 votes cast on the first day of early voting for the 2020 presidential primary election. William Wallace, the poll manager for advanced voting at Emory University’s 1599 Clifton Road polling location, said about 60 voters cast their ballots by 4 p.m. on Feb. 19.
Wallace anticipates the number of votes cast will only surge in the coming weeks as early voting progresses, especially since voting began on Presidents Day. Early voting closes on March 8.
“Holidays are a little slower,” Wallace said. “Normally it’s a little faster than this on the first day, but as we go through the three weeks it’ll pick up.”
Emory Office of Government and Community Affairs student worker Daryn Dusansky (24C) noted that voter turnout was especially low among students.
“There were probably only two, maybe three students that came to vote,” Dusansky said. “Granted, we have class and it’s just the first day, so I don’t know how aware everyone’s been, but I’m hopeful that more students will come and vote.”
The Emory Votes Initiative (EVI) aims to bridge this gap in student awareness by fostering civic engagement at Emory. Specifically, the organization looks to increase voter turnout through educational tabling and voter registration drives but has since experimented with other forms of education such as classroom outreach, EVI intern Angel Sosa (26C) said. He explained that EVI visits classes and gives a five- to 10-minute presentation about what EVI is and important election dates.
“Previously, we kind of slowed down on classroom outreach, just because there wasn't major elections coming up, but obviously 2024 is a huge election year,” Sosa said.
After its inception in 2018, EVI collaborated with the Office of Government and Community Affairs to establish Emory as a DeKalb County polling location in 2022, a change that Sosa said ensures students have a convenient and accessible voting location on campus.
EVI intern Zoe Ferguson (24Ox) believes EVI’s mission is significant because it allows individuals to engage with civic responsibility while promoting individual expression.
“Our mission is distinctly non-partisan,” Ferguson said. “We’re not advocating a specific viewpoint or platform, it’s more just the idea that everyone deserves to have beliefs and deserves to have strong values, and the best way to implement those values in our everyday lives is by voting.”
