BATON ROUGE - New numbers from the Secretary of State's office suggest almost a quarter of registered voters living within the proposed limits of St. George have already voted in the fall election.

Of the 54,785 living in the would-be city limits, approximately 12,656 had voted as of Wednesday evening. That amounts to just over 23 percent. The data does not say whether each resident voted one way or the other on the potential incorporation of St. George, one of the most hotly debated items on the ballot.

Only those residing within the proposed limits of St. George will have the item appear on their ballots. The numbers for that vote won't be available until election day, Oct. 12.

Those numbers are significant when compared to the rest of the state. Officials say roughly 13 percent of the state's 2,961,877 voters have voted early as of that same time Wednesday.