New voter registrations soar in Fulton County, Georgia

In Fulton County, Georgia, 9,769 new voters registered to vote between Election Day on November 3, 2020 and the December 7 cutoff to vote in the U.S. Senate runoff on January 5.  This is according to documents The Civics Center has obtained from Fulton County officials. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Fulton County also received nearly 29,000 total voter registration applications (which includes both new registrations, as well as changes of address and other updates) in the month of November.  Richard Barron of the Fulton County Division of Registration and Elections reported at a public meeting on December 10 that the number of applications the county received broke prior County records for the month of November. 

Fulton County is Georgia’s most populous county.  With just over 1 million residents, the county comprises close to one-tenth of the population of the state as a whole. If other counties in the state see comparable rates of new registrations, the state will have more than 90,000 new voters for the U.S. Senate runoff on January 5 than those registered for the presidential election.

Fulton County has not yet released an age breakdown for these new registrations.  As previously estimated by The Civics Center, statewide 23,000 young people will have turned 18 between the presidential election and the date of the U.S. Senate runoff. Youth and democracy groups made extensive efforts to reach new Georgia voters to get them to register so that they will have a voice in the U.S. Senate runoffs.  

Georgia voters cast 4,045,613 votes in the presidential election statewide, according to the Georgia Secretary of State.  President-elect Biden’s margin of victory was more than 12,000 votes statewide, suggesting that new registrations could make a decisive difference in the U.S. Senate race.  As of November 1, 2020, the number of registered voters in Fulton County was 808,742.  The new registrations account for a 1.2% increase to the overall number of registered voters in the county. 

The Civics Center has been taking part through training local youth leaders in coordination with local groups, providing nonpartisan election information to high school principals, and by postcarding, text-banking, and emailing young voters. We are hopeful that everyone eligible, and especially newly registered young voters, will vote in the election in January.  

Early in-person voting started on December 14.  Registered voters can also request an absentee ballot, and doing so this week will help to avoid potential problems with postal delays over the holidays. More than 200,000 voters have already turned in their absentee ballots for the Senate runoff, and almost 1.2 million have requested absentee ballots for the runoff.