11 p.m.: Some votes have yet to be counted, but challenger Kalki Yalamanchili holds an insurmountable lead over District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez.
Yalamanchili, who ran as an independent, leads the Democratic incumbent 62%-38% with all of Oconee County’s votes in and about two-thirds of Clarke County’s votes counted.
Excluding Election Day votes, which have yet to be counted, Yalamanchili leads Gonzalez 52%-48% in heavily Democratic Clarke County, where Kamala Harris has received nearly 70% of the vote thus far. He won heavily Republican Oconee County with 75% of the vote. Both counties make up the Western Judicial Circuit, but because Clarke is more populous than Oconee, the circuit as a whole leans left.
He holds a roughly 15,000-vote lead over Gonzalez, and according to his campaign staff, there are only about 14,000 ballots left to be counted in Clarke County.
In other local races, 10th District congressman Mike Collins, state Reps. Houston Gaines (R-Athens), Marcus Wiedower (R-Watkinsville) and Trey Rhodes (R-Greensboro), and state Sens. Bill Cowsert (R-Athens) and Frank Ginn (R-Danielsville) are on track to win easily, as expected. All six districts were drawn for Republicans.
9 p.m.: A small batch of mail-in ballots from Clarke County held good news for Western Circuit district attorney candidate Kalki Yalamanchili.
Democratic incumbent Deborah Gonzalez won 56.4% of the 1,606 ballots counted in Clarke County so far, but that’s a much smaller percentage than she received in 2020 (66.7%). If that margin holds up, Yalamanchili, an independent, stands a good chance of winning.
For comparison, Kamala Harris won 75.1% of those same ballots.
All of heavily Republican Oconee County’s votes are in, and Yalamanchili won 76.5% of about 26,000 votes cast. But the independent candidate will need to win some Democrats in much larger Clarke County to unseat Gonzalez.
That seems to be happening, according to Tim Denson, chair of the Athens-Clarke County Democratic Committee. Denson said he has received results directly from observers at about half of Clarke County’s 24 precincts, and that Gonzalez is running well behind Harris. Yalamanchili has even won a few of Clarke’s less left-leaning precincts outright.
“It doesn’t look good for her,” Denson said.
Much of Gonzalez’s re-election strategy revolved around emphasizing her Democratic partisanship while trying to cast Yalamanchili as a Republican in disguise and tie him to Donald Trump and Project 2025. So far, it doesn’t look like it worked.
7:30 p.m.: Early vote results from Oconee County indicate the race for Western Circuit district attorney will once again be a nail-biter.
A batch of more than 21,000 votes Oconee County just uploaded show independent challenger Kalki Yalamanchili with 76.8% of the vote to Democratic incumbent Deborah Gonzalez’s 23.2%.
That’s quite similar to the results from 2020, when independent James Chafin won 76.1% of the vote in Oconee County, and Gonzalez received 23.9%. Gonzalez won that race by a little over three percentage points, thanks to strong support in Clarke County.
6:30 p.m.: Former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams was at Athens-Clarke County Democrats’ downtown headquarters earlier today to phone bank.
Meanwhile, state Rep. Houston Gaines (R-Athens) appeared at an Atlanta rally with vice presidential candidate and Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Here are more photos of Election Day scenes courtesy of Flagpole contributor CJ Bartunek:
5 p.m.: Election Day has been calm and turnout steady, according to local officials and reports from precincts around Athens.
“Other than the infamous Winterville man, everything is fine,” said Rocky Raffle, chair of the Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections. He was referring to a notorious voter who in the past has demanded paper ballots and this year was upset about a DJ outside the polling place. The incident ended peacefully when the man left without police involvement, Raffle said.
The DJs are sponsored by DJs at the Polls, a Philadelphia-based nonpartisan nonprofit that “encourages more people to have their voices heard by making Election Day fun for the whole community.”
More than 9,000 people had voted today as of mid-afternoon, Raffle said. They join the approximately 33,000 who had voted early in person or returned absentee ballots as of Friday.
Absentees were a point of contention in a lawsuit the Republican National Committee filed against seven Georgia counties, including Athens-Clarke, that accused them of illegally accepting absentee ballots over the weekend. A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump harshly rejected the RNC’s argument after a hearing this morning, ruling that the complaint “does not withstand even the most basic level of statutory review and reading comprehension.”
It’s unclear why ACC was named in the lawsuit. Election officials took down the drop box at the Lyndon House Arts Center on Friday, and unlike in Fulton County, the ACC elections office was closed on Saturday and Sunday, according to elections assistant Lisa McGlaun.
7 a.m.: Polls are now open and will close at 7 p.m. in Athens and around the state.
Locally, voters will not only be weighing in the next president, but Congress and five seats in the state legislature, as well as district attorney and three statewide referendums. Click here for Flagpole‘s full election coverage.
Nonpartisan races for county commission and school board were decided back in May, as were some partisan races for sheriff and other positions where there is no Republican opposition.
For those who skipped those races and the March presidential primary, a number of precinct lines and polling places have changed since 2022. Voters were sent new registration cards in February, but you can also visit the Athens-Clarke County Elections Department or Georgia Secretary of State websites for information on polling locations.
Unlike advance voting, Election Day voters are required to vote at their assigned precinct. Those who go to the wrong one will be directed to the correct location by poll workers and given a pass to go to the front of line, or if it’s after 5 p.m. they can cast a provisional ballot.
Voters who forget their photo ID can also cast a provisional ballot, then bring their ID to the election office within three days. Acceptable forms of identification include a Georgia driver’s license (even expired), passport, military ID, tribal ID, college ID card, or a non-driver’s license ID issued by the Department of Driver Services or the ACC election department.
Signs or clothing bearing a candidate or party’s name or slogan is prohibited within 150 feet of polling places. So is providing food or water to people in line. Bringing your own food or water is allowed.
It’s probably not necessary, though. Lines should be relatively short, since half of Athens’ registered voters have already cast their ballots.
Poll workers are now allowed to count absentee ballots ahead of time, so partial results should be posted online relatively quickly. But it will still take hours for results from Election Day voters to be processed.
Send tips about any problems at polling places to [email protected], and check back here for the latest.
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