Elections officials are predicting a large turnout at the polls Tuesday, with as many as 50 percent of the county’s 137,000 registered voters expected to cast a ballot in the primary elections.

So far, 12,338 voters took the opportunity to cast a vote early through advanced voting, which ended Friday at 7 p.m.

Another 2,500 have asked for absentee ballots.

“Based on everything we have seen so far, we are now predicting as many as 50 percent of the voters will vote in this election,” Cherokee County Elections Supervisor Janet Munda said late Friday evening.

In 2008 only 16,000 registered voters went to the polls or voted in early voting in Cherokee County, Munda said.

Munda stressed that voters should go online to the elections office website to check which races should be on their ballot, since many district lines were redrawn during reapportionment earlier this year.

Updated voter registration cards were mailed out in June to the county’s roughly 137,000 registered voters as part of the redistricting process.

“Many people come in and find that the candidates whose signs they have been seeing or whose information they have received are not on their ballots,” Munda said.

“That is often because their area has been districted into another representative’s post.”

The elections supervisor said that if voters get into the voting booth and have questions about their ballot they should go immediately to a poll worker on Tuesday.

In the Republican

Primary alone there are 23 different ballots in this year’s election, she said. With the different Democratic ballots and the non-partisan races, as many as 70 different ballots will be in use in the election in Cherokee County.

Munda said the turnout has been strong in the south end of the county at the Rose Creek Public Library and Woodstock Library in the last week of early voting, with as many as 400 per day voting at each site.

On Election Day next Tuesday, all county precincts will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and voters must cast their ballots at their assigned precinct.

When voting in person at any time, voters must bring a form of government-issued photo identification.

Munda noted all absentee ballots must be returned by 7 p.m. July 31 to the Canton office.

More information is available at the elections office website at voter.cherokeega.com.