Editors Note: With fewer than 12 weeks until the Nov. 8 presidential election, many voters have yet to make up their minds. As part of an occasional series of articles, we’ll check in with undecided voters for their thoughts about key issues and developments during the campaign.

ATLANTA — Daniel Sutton hasn’t ruled out what once seemed unthinkable —voting for the Democratic presidential nominee.

The 30-year-old north Georgia truck driver identifies as a Republican but said Donald Trump’s “past liberal statements” concern him, and he’s not sure he can trust what the party’s presidential nominee says now.

Congress is at least more likely to stand up to Democrat Hillary Clinton, he said, even if that means more gridlock in Washington.

“It’s like you’re danged if you do and you’re danged if you don’t,” said Sutton, of Chatsworth, who voted for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the state’s Republican primary in March.

Sutton is among a small group of Georgians who have not yet picked their candidate in the presidential election that is now less than three months away.

The most recent poll shows about 3 percent of Georgia voters were still undecided as of Wednesday. A poll released earlier this month put that number at 10 percent.

An even bigger group of voters have indicated that their minds could change.

Of those who said they were not voting for Trump, 17 percent said they might give the real estate developer a hearing, according to a recent CBS News poll. Fewer people, about 12 percent, said the same of Clinton.

These uncommitted voters could lead to a competitive race in a state that is typically red.

“They’re different this year, and not just in Georgia,” said Charles S. Bullock III, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

Voters who haven’t picked a presidential candidate by now are often those with little interest in politics and who wait until the last minute to decide. This year, Republican voters like Sutton have found themselves in the mix of undecideds, as well.

Bullock said many are “just are not willing at this time to admit that they would vote for Trump.”

Malorie Morris can relate.

Morris, 21, a student at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, said she is leaning toward Trump even though she finds him arrogant and disagrees with his “crude” comments, particularly about immigration and racial issues.

Morris and her friend, Ashley Toellner, who are both from Warner Robins, said they haven’t embraced a candidate since their preferred choice, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, left the race.

They’ve both had trouble warming to Trump.

“There are things he says and does that just miss the mark as a Republican, and I don’t want to be aligned with that because it’s negative and it’s racist and it’s gross — to put it in one word,” Toellner said.

“That’s where it gets confusing, because I am a Republican and I identify Republican, but he’s not what I was looking for,” she added.

Morris said Clinton is not a consideration because of the former secretary of state’s views on abortion.

Revelations that Clinton kept a private email server at her home didn’t help.

“There’s not a lot of trust there for the Clintons, unfortunately,” Morris said.

Both said they would consider Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. But they worry that voting for a third-party candidate will just help Clinton win the White House — something they don’t want.

They have good reason to think that.

The last Democrat presidential candidate elected in Georgia — Clinton’s husband — benefited from the rise of a third-party candidate, Bullock noted.

Bill Clinton won the Peach State in 1992 without a majority of votes, thanks to the independent Ross Perot, who took 13 percent of the vote.

That helped Bill Clinton narrowly beat George H.W. Bush with 43 percent of the vote in Georgia and nationally.

The ambivalence among voters is understandable, said Kenneth Ellinger, a political science professor at Dalton State College.

So is a “pronounced lack of enthusiasm” for the choices, even among partisan voters, he said.

But Ellinger noted that third-party options, including Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, are unlikely to upset today’s two-party system.

“It’s clear among savvy voters that a vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein is a wasted vote, so that takes them back to the difficult choice between two less-than-desirable candidates,” he said.

This could be why voters have shown more signs of “negative voting” — casting a vote against a candidate rather than for one — this year nationally than they did eight years ago, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.

Clinton supporters are somewhat more likely to say their vote is for the Democrat rather than a vote against the opponent.

Of those polled, 53 percent of Clinton’s supporters said their vote was for her and not a vote against Trump.

About 44 percent of the Republican’s supporters said the same of their candidate.

“It’s not that I am in love with Hillary,” said Chupzi Lema, a Georgia College student from Snellville who favored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Donald Trump just can’t be our president.”

Joshua Moore, also a student at Georgia College, said he’s still weighing the candidates’ negatives.

“It’s not looking at who’s the best at this point. It’s looking at who’s not as bad,” he said.

Moore is unsure of the answer.

“It’s probably still about a coin toss until I figure out which one,” he said. 

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.