Early voting for North Carolina’s primary elections is underway. While you may or may not have made all your decisions on who you are voting for, this hour, we take a look at the importance of North Carolina as a whole and the role the state plays when it comes to primaries.
Primaries can have a low voter turnout rate, however, that doesn’t mean important decisions aren’t being made. From the local sheriff’s race to congressional seats, primaries can shape what voters see on their ballots come election day.
This primary election cycle has also brought some confusing twists and turns. In recent weeks, over 240,000 North Carolina voters received a letter from election officials stating their voter registration lacked certain required identification information. Some voters received these letters days before early voting began. The letters created chaos and confusion for worried voters–promoting hundreds of calls, emails and in-person inquiries to county election boards. We get to the bottom of why this happened and what it means for those voters.
We explore how important North Carolina is in the primaries, what we can learn from the outcome of state primary races, and what, if anything, those outcomes say about what we could see in the general election in North Carolina and beyond.
GUESTS:
Bryan Anderson, politics reporter for The Assembly
Chris Cooper, director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University and author of the book “Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer”
