[Durham INC] Early voting begins tomorrow

[Pat Carstensen]

Please cascade this to neighborhood list-serves if you think it is useful.

The full schedule of early voting is at https://www.dconc.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=29854.  Early voting hours are extended (the polls are open from 8 AM to 7:30PM on), and there are 8 locations (North, South and East Libraries, Duke, NCCU, ERUFF, Criminal Justice Resource Center, and Durham Tech North).


The election folks are excited about "real-time mapping tool" that shows the wait time at each site (http://durhamnc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=3ba5733d5de645debd6e6089e92c7f32) so you can see where to go for the least waiting time.  It is supposed to be updated every 30 minutes. In general, voting on Monday to Wednesday and later in the day are good times to avoid crowds.

For some sites, the bottleneck is how many people can be in the act of voting at the same time.  Get your sample ballot by looking yourself up at https://vt.ncsbe.gov/RegLkup/ (you can carry in your list of choices on your phone).

How long your ballot is will depend which party ballot you have.

  *   The vote for the School Board is final; there are no run-offs or second rounds. Everyone except 17 year olds can vote for in this race (17 year olds who will be 18 on or before Nov 3 have their own version of the ballot; they get to vote in the primary part of the ballot, since it's not fair to show up in November with no-one you want to vote for).
  *   I think write-in only happens in the School Board races -- you don't get to write in primary candidates.
  *   An office only appears on the primary part of the ballot if there are 2 or more candidates from the party represented on the ballot.
  *   Only the Democratic ballot has the county commissioners (to narrow the field from 15 to 5).  It may be on the back of the ballot.
  *   There are a bunch of NC Council of State races (such as Commissioner of Agriculture).
  *   At least some ballots have US House and Senate races.
  *   Some folks will see NC General Assembly races.

If you are using curbside, there is a pole with a button on it that will ring a bell to let the election officials know you are waiting.

You obviously need ID if you are registering, but not otherwise.


Historically, more people use early voting in the general election than in primaries (I suppose people want to see who drops out before Primary Election Day) so expect crowds if you wait until March 3.

If you want to use Ballots by Mail, the information is at http://www.dcovotes.com/voters/voting/absentee-voting (this has been available for the last month).  To return the ballot, either mail it or make sure it is being carried in by you or a "near relative" (there is an official list of what counts as "near").



Regards, pat



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