More than 4.5 million have cast ballots as NC sees ‘unprecedented levels’ of voting
More than 4.5 million North Carolinians already have voted heading into Election Day — that’s more than 95% of all the N.C. voters who cast ballots in 2016.
“We are dealing with unprecedented levels of early voting,” political scientist Michael Bitzer of Catawba College said Sunday. “2020 is simply not comparable to anything this state has seen before in its elections.”
More than 3.6 million people voted in person before early voting closed Saturday afternoon. An additional 929,000 have voted absentee. Combined, that’s nearly 62% of the state’s 7.3 million registered voters.
According to the State Board of Elections:
▪ Democrats and Republicans have each over-performed their registration numbers. Unaffiliated voters, who make up a third of registered voters, have slightly under-performed.
▪ The percentage of women who’ve voted exceeds their registration numbers. Men have under-performed their registration.
“(Sixty-four) percent of all registered women have cast an early vote, compared to 59 percent of men,” Bitzer said in an email. “What is particularly striking is that two-thirds of all the urban-suburban women early voted, the group with the largest percentage of early votes of any in the state.”
▪ African American voters have also slightly under-performed. They’ve made up 19.5% of early voters, while they account for 20.6% of registrations. In 2012, they made up 27% of the early votes and in 2016, 22%, according to Bitzer. But he said the number of voters who don’t indicate their race has tripled since 2016.
“So, we could have some ‘masking’ of who has actually turned out in early voting due to this issue,” he said.
▪ People under 40 made up 28% of early voters, Bitzer said. They comprise 36% of registered voters.
But Rachel Weber, a spokeswoman for NextGen North Carolina, a group funded by former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer to register young voters, said voters aged 18-29 already make up 93% of their total 2016 turnout.
“In key legislative districts where college student turnout could make the difference, youth voter turnout has significantly increased over 2016 early vote totals,” she said in an email Sunday.
The State Board of Elections said Sunday it expects 97% or more of all ballots cast in North Carolina will be counted and reported Tuesday night. County election boards will canvass, or certify, the results on Nov. 13. The state board will certify the entire election on Nov. 24.
County canvasses also will deal with provisional votes and absentee votes that arrive late. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to allow the state to accept absentee ballots until Nov. 12, as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day.
In addition to the 929,000 people who sent in or dropped off absentee ballots, about 265,000 of the 1.36 million voters who requested them actually voted early in person, state officials said.
That leaves about 168,000 absentee ballots unaccounted for. That means those voters could either vote in person on Election Day or send in their ballots by Tuesday — or not vote at all.
Of the 168,000 who got an absentee ballot and haven’t returned it or voted in person, 60,300 are Democrats, 66,300 Unaffiliated and 39,300 Republicans. At least 30,800 are Black.
Black voters have seen a higher rate of rejected, or “spoiled” absentee ballots than other voters, according to the analytics firm Sisu. It found the rejection rate for Black voters was 5.3%, about two and half times times the rate for everybody else.
State officials say ballots are rejected for missing things such as witness signatures, which could be the result of people being unfamiliar with the requirements. Ballots or the envelopes they come in have no indication of race, they said.
Asked about Black turnout during an appearance Saturday, U.S. Rep. Alma Adams said while she’s happy with the overall early voting numbers, “we still are far off from where we need to be.”
But she said she’s confident Black turnout will rise by the end of Tuesday.
“People are so concerned about their livelihood, about their family,” said Adams, a Charlotte Democrat. “This pandemic has just wrecked havoc on our community in this country, across North Carolina and in this district. So the fact that we have had more than 100,000 requests for absentee ballots in my district alone says to me that people are not only energized but they believe that they have a responsibility. I’m talking to people who didn’t vote in 2016 and they regret that now. And they look back and don’t want that to happen again.”
More than 489,000 people have already voted in Mecklenburg, or about 62%.
More than 536,000 people have voted in Wake County, or more than 67%, and 162,000 in Durham County, or more than 66%.
Staff writer Tim Funk contributed.
This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 4:13 PM with the headline "More than 4.5 million have cast ballots as NC sees ‘unprecedented levels’ of voting."
