More than 1 million requests: North Carolina mail-in balloting shatters records

North Carolina voters continue to break records daily with the number of people who are voting early by mail this year as they have been encouraged to do so if they fear catching COVID-19.

Last week, the number of vote-by-mail absentee ballot requests in North Carolina passed 1 million, and as of Wednesday evening was nearly 1.14 million. Requests so far are about 10 times greater than they were at this point ahead of the election four years ago.

The state has almost 7.2 million registered voters, the state Board of Elections said in a report published Thursday morning. The numbers indicate that about 1 out of every 6.3 North Carolina voters has requested an absentee mail-in ballot.

“The fact that over 1 million registered North Carolina voters have requested an absentee by mail ballot is truly amazing …, considering that in all of 2016, the total requests for an absentee by mail ballot was a little over 231,000,” wrote political scientist Michael Bitzer of Catawba College Monday on the Old North State Politics blog.

Read more: https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2020/10/02/north-carolina-voters-cast-record-number-votes-mail/3592636001/
(Asheville Citizen-Times)