The vast majority of North Carolina voters aren’t going to wait until Election Day
More than 2 million North Carolinians have already voted in the fall election, and at this pace state elections officials estimate that as many as 80% of votes will be cast before polls open on Election Day.
As of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, 1,369,041 people had voted in person at early voting sites across the state, while another 655,842 had voted by mail, according to the State Board of Elections. That’s nearly three times as many people who had voted at this point during the 2016 presidential election.
Nearly 28% of the state’s 7.4 million registered voters have cast their ballots, with another 10 days of early voting to go.
“North Carolinians are voting in record numbers,” Damon Circosta, who heads the state board, said during a press conference. “And for the most part that experience has been smooth, and for everyone it’s been safe and secure.”
Elections officials say expanded early voting hours, in the evenings and on weekends, have helped boost early turnout. The state estimates that half of all voters will choose to vote in person at early polling places, which opened last Thursday.
But mail-in ballots are also playing a larger role than usual in this fall’s election because of concerns many people have about voting in person during the coronavirus pandemic. Through Monday, nearly 1.4 million North Carolina voters had requested a mail-in ballot, nearly seven times as many as at this point during the 2016 election.
Fixing ballot problems
An estimated 7,000 to 10,000 voters returned their mail-in ballots with some problem on the envelope, such as a missing signature or address. Local state boards are now contacting those voters following a process announced Monday by the state board after three weeks of uncertainty over how to handle the problem ballots.
On Sept. 22, the state board decided that voters who failed to include the required witness signature or other information on the envelope would be given a chance to affirm that the ballot was theirs without submitting a new one. The new process was part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit brought by a political group representing retirees.
But Republicans, including the Trump campaign and leaders of the state House and Senate, objected, saying the policy would allow voters to circumvent a state law that requires a witness signature. After two federal judges and the state Court of Appeals began to weigh in, the state board came up with the new process that maintains the witness signature requirement.
Now if an absentee ballot arrives without a witness signature, the ballot will be “spoiled” or rendered invalid and a new ballot sent, unless the person has voted at an early voting site in the meantime.
But if there are other problems with the envelope, such as a missing address for the witness or a signature in the wrong place, the voter will be sent an affidavit to sign and return attesting that the ballot is valid.
In either case, the county board of elections must contact a voter with a problem mail-in ballot in writing within one business day to let the voter how to correct it. Circosta said one of the reasons the board opted to settle the dispute over the witness signature was to make sure voters have time to do that before Election Day.
“We’re lucky in that we still have 14 days before the election,” he said.
Deadline to receive mailed ballots
Republicans are still fighting another provision of the court settlement, which extends the date a mail-in ballot will be accepted to Nov. 12, as long as it is postmarked Nov. 3, Election Day. State law says ballots can be accepted only through Nov. 6.
Katelyn Love, the attorney for the state elections board, said the Nov. 12 date stands for now since it’s part of the lawsuit settlement approved by a Wake County Superior Court judge. But either way, Circosta said, the deadline for voting doesn’t change.
“Every voter in North Carolina must vote by Nov. 3,” he said. “What’s at issue is how long we will be able to receive ballots that come in late postmarked by Nov. 3.”
He said the board chose to extend that date, to match the time given to military and overseas voters, because of concerns the U.S. Postal Service won’t be able to get mail-in ballots delivered within three days.
How to check your ballot status
People who have voted by mail can check the status of their ballot at the website BallotTrax. More than 237,000 North Carolina voters have signed up to use BallotTrax, said Karen Brinson Bell, the elections board executive director.
Whether by mail or cast in person, the early votes are scanned into a machine and counted as they are received. But those votes are not tabulated and taken out of the machine until Election Day, when the results from early voting will be announced just after the polls close statewide at 7:30 p.m.
Registered Democrats have cast about 45% of ballots so far, compared to about 26% from Republicans and 28% from unaffiliated voters. Democrats account for less than 36% of registered voters in the state.
This story was originally published October 20, 2020 at 6:14 PM.
