Tuesday’s midterms saw voters in Alamance County go to the polls in higher numbers than any non-Presdiential election in at least 15 years.
According to the N.C. state board of elections, the preliminary vote count on Tuesday was based on some 68,349 ballots that the county’s voters had cast either on the day of the election or during the early voting period that preceded it.
This figure amounts to a turnout of roughly 56.19 percent – an increase from the 53.15 percent who voted during the previous midterms in 2022, although far short of the 76.06 percent who took part in the last Presidential election two years ago.
The percentage of the local electorate who voted this year also exceeds the turnout for earlier midterm elections. According to the state board of elections, 55.18 percent of the county’s voters cast ballots in 2018 while 46.91 percent did so in 2014. The state board doesn’t include any turnout figures in its results from the midterms in 2010.
Despite the high turnout, there were few places in Alamance County where people were still waiting to vote when the polls closed on Tuesday, according to the county’s election director Dawn Hurdle.
“At the end of the night, there were lines at the Elmira Community Center, which had also served as an early voting location,” Hurdle recalled in an interview Wednesday. “And the Graham Rec Center, which was another early voting site, had lines. There were also a lot of phone calls [from confused voters] yesterday. We probably had more phone calls than in a Presidential Election.”
Voters who wound up at the wrong precinct on Tuesday were generally given “provisional” ballots to fill out. These ballots weren’t included in the preliminary vote tally on Tuesday, but may still be counted – in part or in whole – depending on how many of the ballot items at the site the voters showed up were also on the ballots in their home precincts.
According to Hurdle, the elections office has 722 provision ballots that were completed, either on Election Day or during the early voting period, by people who didn’t appear on the voter rolls when they went to the polls. Hurdle said that the county’s election staff is currently evaluating these ballots in preparation for their review by the county’s board of elections on Tuesday, November 10.
In addition to these provisional ballots, the local elections board will review 15 absentee ballots that were withheld from the preliminary vote count for one reason or another. Hurdle said that these ballots could have defects as simple as a missing signature. She added that the county’s election staff has tried to contact the voters to give them an opportunity to “cure” these defects so that their votes can enter the election’s final results.
Hurdle said that the local elections board will also determine which of these ballots have been successful cured when its members meet at 1:00 p.m. on the 10th.
