Early Voting

With no contested Democratic primary for president, turnout in early voting has lagged compared to 2020.

Statewide, early voting started Thursday. A block party was held by nonpartisan voting organizations and Johnson C. Smith University students.

Early voting in North Carolina starts Thursday, Oct. 20, and ends at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 3.

States like Georgia and Arizona are now considering bills to limit absentee by mail voting, but North Carolina — home to some of the most bitter fights over voting in the last decade — has been completely quiet in 2021. Political watchers in Raleigh wonder when that's going to change.

The director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections said she expects to report at least 97% of all ballots cast by the end of Election night on Tuesday. That’s due to the huge share of voters having already cast their ballot before Election Day.

More than 4 million North Carolina voters have already cast their ballot, as early voting draws to a close on Saturday, Oct. 31. But after a flurry of lawsuits around absentee ballots in the state, a small pool of voters is struggling to fix problems with their ballots before Election Day.

State election officials say about 144,000 people voted curbside between Oct. 15 and Oct. 28.

More than 6 million voters under 30 have cast early ballots, compared with roughly 2 million at the same time in 2016. The number of first-time voters in that group has doubled in four years.

Election officials in 10 Charlotte-area counties say, so far, they haven’t received any major complaints from voters or seen any voter intimidation at polling sites.

Around 2.5 million people in North Carolina have already cast their ballots in this election. That's about a third of the state's registered voters.