THOMAS COUNTY, Ga. (WTXL) -- It's back to the polls for some South Georgia residents. The special state senate election is just a little more than a week away.
Early voting finished up Friday to fill the seat of former Georgia State Senator John Bulloch.
He represented senate district 11 until earlier this month when he abruptly resigned.
The six candidates for Bulloch's seat are five republicans Marshall Berman, Dean Burke, Brad Hughes, Mike Keown, and Eugene McNease. They're running as republicans on the ticket; Jeffrey Bivins is running as a libertarian.
Some Georgia residents say they wouldn't be surprised if less people were aware of this election, seeing as it's not during the normal election season.
Sandra Bales of Grady County says she thinks a lot of her friends will be heading out to vote for the special election for state senate on January 8th.
“I think Americans ought to take advantage of their rights and liberties and vote…I have had several people mention that they did do the early voting. I prefer to do it at my regular time,” said Bales.
On the ballot is just one race. The seat for Georgia state senate district 11. That covers Colquitt, Decatur, Early, Grady, Miller, Seminole and portions of Miller and Thomas counties. Tracy Robinson says she didn't even know there was this special election.
“It's not as publicized as the general election, the presidential election. It's not as publicized so if you're not in the loop so to speak you really don't know about it,” she said/
But she says now that she does, she plans on hitting the polls on January 8th.
“The senate actually holds as we know a lot of power so it's important as constituents that we put the people that most represent us in office,” said Robinson.
But with early voting taking place for three days right after Christmas and Election Day a week after New Year’s, Robinson says voters minds may be on other things.
“The holidays that's all their minds are on, their minds are on the holidays and spending time with family and nobody's really thinking about you know politics that's the one time that you don't want to think of politics,” she said.
But that's not stopping voters from realizing the importance of this race.
“The way the population of Georgia is set up we're a very rural area of a state and most of the folks are living in the metro Atlanta area so it's critical for us,” said David Sofferin of Thomas County.
