Black voters, students home for the holiday help drive early turnout for Georgia Senate race

Voters line up at the Ben Robertson Community Center in Kennesaw. The wait there on Monday morning lasted about 30 minutes, but other locations saw wait times of more than an hour. (Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder)

Early voting in the U.S. Senate runoff got off to a busy start in Georgia, with more than half a million ballots cast as of Monday night, including more than 300,000 votes cast Monday.

“Just…WOW!” tweeted Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state Monday night. “GA voters, facilitated through the hard work of county election & poll workers, have shattered the old Early Vote turnout, with 300,438 Georgians casting their votes today. They blew up the old record of 233k votes in a day. Way to go voters & election workers.”

Lines varied by county and precinct, with some of the busiest areas reporting waits of an hour or more over the weekend and on Monday.