Jimmy Carter, at age 100, casts his 2024 ballot by mail

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Jimmy Carter cast his ballot in the 2024 election Wednesday.

The former president voted by mail, the Carter Center confirmed in a statement. It happened barely two weeks after Carter celebrated his 100th birthday on Oct. 1 at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he’s been living in hospice care.

His son Chip Carter said before the family gathering that his father had this election very much in mind.

“He’s plugged in,” Chip Carter told The Associated Press. “I asked him two months ago if he was trying to live to be 100, and he said, ‘No, I’m trying to live to vote for Kamala Harris.’”

The Carter Center's brief statement said it had no more details to share.

Georgia's registered voters have been turning out in record numbers since early voting began Tuesday. Nearly 460,000 had voted in-person or cast absentee ballots by Wednesday afternoon, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.

Carter's vote should count even if he's no longer alive by Election Day on Nov. 5.

Robert Sinners, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, noted that Georgia election rules state that when an absentee ballot is received by local election officials “it shall be deemed to have been voted then and there.”

Rules vary by state on whether early votes still count if the people who cast them die before Election Day. The issue took on greater significance in 2020, when COVID-19 deaths were soaring.

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This story has been corrected to show the first two days of early voting in Georgia were Tuesday and Wednesday, not Monday and Tuesday.