By Chris Cooper
The hangover from the 2000 election took a while to get over. A full year later, folks were dressing up as “hanging chads” for Halloween and “Palm Beach County” soon became known less as a popular retirement destination and more as the home of the “butterfly ballot.” No amount of Goody’s headache powder could save either side from the hangover of the most contested and contentious election of the previous century.
While the election administration talk in North Carolina is currently focused on absentee vote by mail (as it should be), in person early voting starts in North Carolina on October 15 and the State Board of Elections recently released their list of early voting sites across the state, so it seems like an ideal time to do a quick analysis of the sites and compare them to 2016, in preparation for early voting. The number and placement of sites is critical to a well-functioning democracy. As numerous studies have found, people are more likely to vote if they have a polling place close to their homes, and this effect is particularly acute for those from a lower socioeconomic status.
The Basics: Counting Early Voting Sites in 2020
In all, there are 462 total early voting sites in North Carolina in 2020. While about a fifth of all counties (19) counties include just a single early voting site, the average county has just shy of 5 sites. As the table below demonstrates, the plurality of counties have between 2 and 5 sites. Taken together, there is about one site for every 13,429 registered voters in the average county.
Comparison to 2016
In all, there are 15 more early voting sites in North Carolina in 2020 than in 2016. One quarter (25) of all North Carolina counties have fewer sites than they had in 2016, 43 remained constant and 32 have more sites than they had in 2016.
Sunday Voting
Counties also have some discretion over whether to implement Sunday voting during the early voting period. As you can see in the table below, voters can vote at at least one early voting site on one Sunday during early voting in 13 counties, while 30 counties offer Sunday voting at least one site on both Sundays during the early voting period.
Comparison to 2016
Wrapping Up
Ballot access is critical to a well-functioning democracy, and while North Carolina's (and the country’s) attention is rightfully focused on absentee by mail access at the moment, our collective attention will soon turn to questions surrounding in person early voting. This brief exploration of early voting sites reinforces that, even in a pandemic, voters need to have access to a proper number of early voting sites. Counties have wide discretion to recommend the number of voting sites that work for them and, as this brief exploration should make clear, the situation in terms of number of counties and availability of Sunday voting varies widely throughout the state.
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*note: thanks to some eagle-eyed readers who pointed out that the funky formatting in the tables was leading to a few counties not being listed. The problem should now be fixed. My apologies.
Chris Cooper is
Madison Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs
at Western Carolina University. He tweets at @chriscooperwcu.