NEW HANOVER COUNTY — While canvassing and vote finalization for municipal elections just wrapped, boards of elections are already looking to 2024’s presidential election year and spring primaries.
READ MORE: NHC Municipal Elections 2023: Wilmington’s new council, beach towns see minimal changes
The New Hanover County Board of Election approved a one-stop preliminary voting plan for next year’s primary elections, slated to take place March 5; early voting opens for 15 days.
Polling locations include:
- Northeast Regional Library, 1241 Military Cutoff Road
- Carolina Beach Town Hall, 1121 N. Lake Park Blvd.
- Cape Fear Community College Health Sciences Building, 415 N. Second Street
- NHC Senior Resource Center, 2222 S. College Road
By statutory requirement, boards of election are required to offer early voting at the BOE main office, at a minimum. The New Hanover County BOE historically has offered between three to five sites for early voting. In the 2020 presidential election primaries, it offered five one-stop locations.
The fifth spot, CFCC’s northern campus, available in the 2016 and 2018 primaries was under-utilized and therefore not needed.
“There’s a much smaller footprint for the primary election. I do believe four proposed sites meet the needs of voters, if we optimally staff those sites,” elections director Rae Hunter-Havens told the board.
The board of elections anticipates a larger turnout for 2024 — a presidential election year — than the municipal elections, which had 21% of 100,549 eligible voters show up at the polls. During the 2020 presidential election, 74% of 177,350 New Hanover County voters participated in the process, compared to 52% of 180,050 in the 2022 midterm elections.
The 2024 locations will be open Feb. 15 to March 1 from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., as mandatory per state statute. The weekend of Feb. 17 and 18 will remain closed, but Feb. 24 and 25 will open from noon to 5 p.m. The number of weekend hours need to be offered equally among all sites.
The sites will close at 3 p.m. on the final early voting day, March 2, before Primary Election Day, March 5. Polls open 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.
The 2024 schedule is more consistent than what was planned for municipal elections and bulks up staffing at its two most popular locations, the Northeast Library, also BOE headquarters, and the Senior Resource Center. The goal is to reduce wait times at the polls and also ensure equitable distribution for voter access
Chair Derrick Miller said people expressed to him confusion during this past election with inconsistent hours.
“Not just the sense of unfairness, but I was accosted by several neighbors confused as to why the site downtown was not open,” Miller said.
During the municipal election season, the Senior Resource Center and Carolina Beach Town Hall and CFCC downtown sites started nine days later than the Northeast Library. Some voters said it led to greater access for certain parts of the county.
Hunter-Havens received negative feedback, 40 to 60 phone calls, from the community. She said the board experimented with varied schedules in 2012, a presidential election year, and 2014, a midterm, and also did not receive positive feedback.
“Any staggering of the schedule and you’re going to place undue burden on the office site,” she said. “That’s going to result in long lines and voter disenfranchisement and I wouldn’t recommend that.”
The Carolina Beach location is the newest addition, added in the summer by the board of elections to accommodate voters in the southern island communities. During the 2023 municipal elections, 998 voters used this spot for one-stop voting — a fairly even split among Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated.
READ MORE: NHC Board of Elections members vote on additional early-voting spot on Pleasure Island
The town did not specifically ask for the addition of an early-voting site and Hunter-Havens said last week she hadn’t received any specific feedback yet.
“They’re very much used to voting on Election Day,” she said.
Miller said at the July meeting a steady increase in voter turnout during the last three municipal elections was a reason to add the extra site. Board member Bruce Kemp also brought up at the summer meeting that many people from Carolina Beach spend an hour driving to the Senior Resource Center and back just to vote. He said it was unfair for the island residents to have limited options for early voting, especially during the municipal elections.
During last week’s meeting Kemp asked if it was worth manning additional sites for such a small portion of the population. During the 2022 elections, roughly 1,000 voters utilized Cape Fear Community College’s northern campus and downtown locations each, versus the 10,000-plus that showed up at the Northeast Library and Senior Resource Center.
He recommended fewer sites with more staff, but ultimately voted unanimously with the board to accept the schedule as presented.
In general, each early voting location has eight to 14 officials, Hunter-Havens told Port City Daily. The board of elections has an adopted budget of $1.5 million for fiscal year 2023-2024, a roughly 14% increase from the year prior. On average, a single one-stop site costs approximately $30,000 to staff.
“Larger sites, such as the Northeast Library and Senior Resource Center, require more staff than smaller sites due to the size of the voting enclosure and greater utilization of curbside voting,” she added.
The board of elections does not use volunteers; all workers are compensated and rates range from $15 to $17 per hour for early voting sites. The board of elections is estimating $128,812 to staff the four locations.
“If you remove downtown, the other three are very centrally located or in the southern part,” Hunter-Havens responded.
She also said downtown’s location is popular for Castle Hayne residents and familiar to many voters.
“People vote where they travel most,” Hunters-Havens said.
Downtown is home to a greater population of residents facing transportation challenges or without access to vehicles. According to the city’s Walk Wilmington plan, areas of greatest transportation disadvantage — based on carless households, low-income, mobility impairments, and historically marginalized populations — are centered around the downtown core or the western half of Wilmington.
In the 2023 municipal election, 1,015 voters used the downtown CFCC location to cast an early ballot compared to nearly 3,500 at the Northeast Regional Library and 2,500 at the Senior Resource Center.
Despite the board of elections’ best efforts to divert voters to additional sites, the library and senior center have the highest demand. Hunter-Havens said the best strategy is to ensure those two are adequately staffed.
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