Early Voting Begins in North Carolina

Polls are open in North Carolina's 100 counties. 

Early voting this year in North Carolina will only last 10 days. In 2013, the General Assembly shortened the period by a week. Early voting will end Saturday, May 3rd. Lamar Joyner is the deputy director for the Forsyth County Board of Elections. He says in 2010, voters could only cast early ballots at the Forsyth County Government Center in downtown Winston-Salem. But while there are fewer days for early voting, Joyner says in Forsyth County people will have more locations and longer hours to cast their ballot.
“For Forsyth County, we had to have at least 144 hours for early voting. We did that by opening three additional locations and we went above that requirement by having 166 total hours of early voting.”
The new satellite locations are the Kernersville Senior Center Library, the Lewisville Library and the Rural Hall Library. Next Monday (April 28) and Tuesday (April 29), all three locations will stay open until 6 p.m. In Guilford County, residents can vote at the Old Courthouse and seven other locations. On some days, the satellite locations will stay open until 6:30 p.m. 

Other changes this year, people can no longer register to vote at early-voting sites and then vote. Also, voters do not have to show a government approved ID. That law goes into effect in 2016.  The primary election is May 6.