Despite some setbacks, Hall added, “there were many successes”.
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Advance voting begins Friday in North Carolina, the first of 37 states that will allow balloting by mail for any reason or in person before the actual Election Day of November 8. Some counties, Orange included, already had an early voting plan in place for a 10-day early voting period but were sent back to the drawing board when the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the state’s Voter ID law and restored the early voting period to 17 days. Black voters disproportionally use early voting.
The GOP-led state board retained Sunday voting in several counties but generally declined to expand or eliminate it. The state board had worked through a half-dozen counties Thursday morning and approved plans backed by majorities on local boards.
The Orange County Board of Elections sent all four options to the state board on August 25.
In 23 of the state’s 100 counties, early voting hours have been reduced from the amount given to voters in 2012, and the state itself is viewed as something of a swing state for both Trump and Clinton. “The appeals court specifically noted that Sunday voting is popular with black voters and with predominantly black churches that operate souls to the polls” efforts. “When it’s been in existence for us to cut it out completely, we have to have a good reason for doing that”. The board also increased the number of cumulative hours of early voting in urban counties such as Wake, surrounding Raleigh, and Mecklenburg, which includes Charlotte.
“I was very glad to see that some of the most egregious problems were corrected”, said Anita Earls with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, whose group sued over the 2013 law.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Board of Elections took a measured approach Thursday to settling local quarrels over early voting plans, refusing to expand voting on Sundays this fall but increasing access to the ballot in counties where GOP proposals seemed too limiting.
Republican board member Bob Randall, who did not agree to that plan, submitted his own minority plan with 530 hours.
By a 3-2 party line vote, the state board agreed to keep one Sunday of early voting in Hoke, Craven and Richmond counties, rejecting Democratic requests to restore the second Sunday offered in 2012. “They could have done better”. The board was charged with settling disputed early voting schedules in 33 counties where the local board vote wasn’t unanimous.
Any legal actions must happen soon.
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Iowa will accept early ballots starting September 29, three days after the first presidential debate. Those returned ballots must be counted on early-voting tabulators and need to be coded based on early voting decisions.
