More than 300,000 residents cast ballots in Georgia on the first day of early voting, shattering the previous record set in 2020.

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Secretary of State, said Georgia’s previous record was 136,000 in 2020, but the “blow out numbers” seen on Tuesday were 123% higher than the old record.

Georgia’s early voting was shattered before 1 p.m. today with a record 154,505 votes, according to Sterling. “MASSIVE numbers! Way to go county election offices and way to go voters!” he posted on X.

Keep it going Georgia!Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recommended that Georgians plan ahead for how they intend to vote in the upcoming election.

“If you want to vote absentee, make that decision today and get your request in,” he said during a Tuesday briefing on the start of early voting. “If you are going to vote early, take a look at your calendar and decide when you are going to vote early, and if you are going to vote on Election Day, decide what time.”

Raffensperger said his office’s goal at early voting sites and at the 2,400 polling places on Election Day is to have voters spend as little time as possible filling out their ballots. It took the average voter only a few minutes to cast a ballot on Tuesday morning.

“We want to make sure that they’re less than an hour. We loved when we had in 2022 the average wait time was less than three minutes and got down as low as two minutes at times,” Raffensperger said. “This morning, there appeared to be no slowdowns and lines have been moving everyone in less (time) than that.”

Various reports from our reporters in the field saw wait times range from 30 to 45 minutes this afternoon at the Dunwoody Library to only 15 minutes at the Ponce De Leon Avenue Library branch

In the photo above from @khakico129_, the early voting line snaked out of the Dunwoody Library with a wait of 30 to 45 minutes.