Despite all the talk nationally about concerns over how Election Day could go, Brunswick County Board of Elections Director Sara Knotts said she feels good that her team is ready for Tuesday.
With more than 60,000 votes cast in early voting, Knotts said, “We got a chance to get our sea legs under us.” Another 17,000 people in the county voted by absentee.
Brunswick County, on the coast in the southeast corner of North Carolina, has already had almost 70% turnout for the election.
Statewide, more than 4.5 million people in North Carolina have either voted early or by absentee, almost as many as the total vote count in the presidential election four years ago.
“We are in good shape, we are just waiting on Election Day,” Knotts said in an interview with Spectrum News 1 Monday morning.
There will be about 2,660 polling precincts open across the state on Election Day, according to the State Board of Elections. The state said as many as a million voters in North Carolina could cast their ballot Tuesday.
In Brunswick County and in counties across the state, boards of elections have been meeting weekly, sometimes more, to process the hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots cast so far this fall.
Record numbers of voters in North Carolina and around the county are voting by mail this year over concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, which has been spiking as the election draws closer.
North Carolina law allows the county boards to start processing those votes early, which involves checking voter and witness information and feeding ballots into tabulators. County boards will not run the actual vote count from those ballots and the early voting sites until Election Day.
The State Board of Elections expects to be able to report about 97% of the votes cast across all 100 counties in North Carolina on election night.
Absentee ballots can come in to county election boards until Nov. 12 after a federal court ruling last week, but all mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Election Day.
On Tuesday, Knotts said, her team in Brunswick County will start work before the polls open on Election Day. At the County Board of Elections Office in Bolivia, North Carolina, and around the state, officials will be fielding calls from voters and precinct officials to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Knotts said the Board of Elections in Brunswick County will convene at 5 p.m. to close out the machines for early voting and absentee ballots. “Then we wait for precinct officials to show up,” she said.
Polls close at 7:30 p.m. After that, precinct officials will hand-deliver results from the vote tabulators to the county boards. In Brunswick County, that means bringing a thumb drive from the tabulator into the office where the board members will be waiting.
“Please remember that all results reported on election night are unofficial. We will post results as quickly as possible, but our primary objective will be accuracy more than speed,” said State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell.
“State and county elections officials take many steps after every election to ensure all eligible votes are counted and the results are audited and accurate,” Bell said in a statement Sunday.
Unofficial results from early and absentee voting are posted to the State Board of Elections as soon as all polling places in the state close. Some polling sites could remain open after 7:30 p.m. and delay that first round of results.
State law says that anyone who is in line to vote by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day will be allowed to cast a ballot, even if the polls have to stay open late. Voting hours could also be extended if a precinct opens more than 15 minutes late or if voting is interrupted for more than 15 minutes in a precinct.
“Unexpected issues arise during every election, such as power outages, voting equipment malfunctions, tabulator or printer jams and long lines at some voting places. These are not indications of malicious activity, and processes are in place to respond to each of these scenarios,” the state board said in a news release.
The state board said it expects results from Election Day to begin coming in from county precincts by 8:30 p.m. “Reporting times will vary by county. Results are updated every few minutes as they come in from the counties,” according to the board.