NC Elections

People from other states sometimes ask pointed questions about how elections operate in North Carolina. Not to judge or to criticize, just out of natural curiosity spurred by the differences in electoral law extant among the states.

The NC State Board of Elections makes available a General Election Voter Guide mailed to every homes, that indicates how to register to vote, how to vote, and a synopsis of the candidates in the statewide elections. The website even has a nifty polling place tool to locate the exact precinct your residence falls within. By October 1st each County's Election Board must make available a sample of the ballot for the upcoming November election. So the 2008 ballot I will see is already available from the Durham County Board of Elections.

Onto the things people inquire about:

• According to the FAQ an unaffiliated voter can vote in the primary election, BUT only for non-partisan offices. Having done this myself this meant I could vote in the primary for sure, but the only actual votes I could cast were for judges. A quick look at the sample 2008 primary ballot shows that removing the option to cast a primary vote for candidates for president, senator, governor, even state auditor, with only the option for voting on judges, effectively removes the independent voter from the primary election process people mean when they ask if unaffiliated voters can vote for in the primary for either party.
• You can register in NC as a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Unaffiliated. According to the stats on the website tonight, those figures are 2,745,169 Democratic (45.4%), 1,962,629 Republican (32.5%), 1,754 Libertarian (0%), & 1,337,500 Unaffiliated (22.1%) out of 6,047,052 total voters. I usually tell people the Libertarian Party of North Carolina grew out of the interests of many tobacco farmers but I did not see anything about that on their list of issues.
• For the November elections voters can visit designated locations and vote as early as October 16th. This is One-Stop Absentee Voting: "Any registered North Carolina voter may choose to vote in person using One-Stop Absentee Voting which begins the third Thursday before the election and ends the Saturday prior to the election."
• According to the elections results posted by Durham County, the percentage of registered voters for general elections in years the presidency was included were 60.2% in 1996, 53.29% in 2000, and 73.13% in 2004. Statewide elections results were 59% in 1996, 59% in 2000, and 64% in 2004. Both show around a 20% decline in these percentages in general elections without the presidency included (2002, 2004, etc.).
• NC considers voter records a part of public records and offers a tool to research individual voter records.