RALEIGH, N.C. — As of Monday, more than 800,000 people in North Carolina have requested mail-in ballots.
That number is more than 10 percent of the state’s registered voters. For the same date four years ago, about 57,000 people had requested absentee ballots.
State Board of Elections Chair Damon Circosta is not worried that the counties can handle all the extra work — he’s confident that they can. But, what he is thinking about is if North Carolinians can be patient after Election Day to get the final result if races are close.
“It’s not about getting it fast, it’s about getting it right,” Circosta said in an interview with Spectrum News 1. “I worry that North Carolinians can have the patience in the hours and days after the election” to get the final results.
Mail-in ballots require a lot more work from North Carolina’s 100 county boards of elections. Instead of just tabulating the votes from Election Day, county boards and their staff members have to open each envelope, check each voter and witness, and feed the ballot into a machine to tabulate the votes.
“The challenges are real,” Circosta said. “If there is any group of civil servants who are up for it, it’s the county and state boards of elections.”
The concern comes if county boards get a flood of votes right before and on Election Day. Then the counties could get a backlog that may make it hard to tabulate all the ballots before the vote totals start to be released at 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
The good news is that many North Carolina voters are submitting their ballots already.
New Brunswick County Board of Elections Director Sara Knotts told Spectrum News 1 that just Monday she had 300 people bring in completed ballots to her office in the southeast corner of the state.
“The response is huge,” she said. “Everyday there’s more volume than the day before.”
Knotts said she added a receptionist in the front elections office to handle all the ballots coming in from voters, and added coronavirus safety measures like only allowing in two people at a time.
On the opposite side of North Carolina, Watauga County Board of Elections Director Matthew Snyder said he had 100 people walk into his office in Boone to hand deliver their ballots, and even more are coming in by mail.
“They are not waiting until the last minute,” he said in a phone interview.
Around the state, North Carolina elections officials will have a leg up over some other swing states like Pennsylvania. Bipartisan county election boards here can start meeting as early as Sept. 29 to begin the labor intensive work of processing mail-in ballots, though the votes will not be tallied until election day.
Knotts, in coastal New Brunswick County, said people in her community have been confused about how the process works to count mail-in ballots. She said she’s gotten so many calls that she decided to put together a short video on YouTube to explain what happens after a voter submits their absentee ballot.
“A lot of people don’t know what happens when it gets to our office,” Knotts said.
“They’re questioning the process as a whole,” she said, including whether or not they can rely on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver their ballots on time.
Snyder said the only real negatives he's heard in his community has been about third-party mailers. He said voter registration forms and absentee ballot request forms from political groups and nonprofits have caused some confusion for voters. He said people can always check their voter registration status on the state Board of Election website.
He also reminded people that if they need to change their address, they should go ahead and do that now before the Board of Elections gets busier closer to Election Day.
