WILMINGTON — New Hanover County’s interest in postal voting this year is on track to at least rival that of the busy 2008 presidential election.
“We are slammed,” New Hanover County Board of Elections absentee voting specialist Nathan Evick said Monday morning. “It’s been popular.”
His office by that time had mailed out 1,169 ballots to county voters who had requested them. “But there are plenty more behind it that are un-scanned and unprocessed,” said Evick. “We are working as fast as we can.”
In the breakdown, 579 postal ballots had gone out to voters registered in the city limits, representing a possible ramp-up in voting interest due to that ballot’s controversial baseball stadium referendum. The referendum asks city voters whether to authorize $37 million of bonds and an associated property tax increase for the purchase of land and construction of a baseball stadium. The city’s plan is to bring to Wilmington an Atlanta Braves minor-league team; the tax increase as discussed would be 2.5 cents.
According to the elections board, New Hanover County generated a little less than 7,000 postal ballots in the 2008 presidential election. “I’d say we’re on track to finish with about that number,” Evick said.
He used the 2008 election for comparison because it was the last to feature a presidential card. Notably, it also featured a bond referendum. Sixty-two percent of participating New Hanover County voters approved a $164 million issue for Cape Fear Community College projects, including the 230,000-square-foot Union Station erected at the corner of Front and Red Cross streets on the downtown Wilmington campus.
Otherwise, elections staffers said registrations are coming in aplenty. As of Sept. 22, New Hanover County had 154,639 registered voters, roughly a 6 percent increase since the same time last year, according to the state’s rolls. A Sept. 6 report from the county’s elections office showed Wilmington was nearing the 82,000 mark.
The county office’s five full-time employees are getting some help from part-timers, Evick said, but may have to expand that corps as the calendar flips toward the start of one-stop absentee voting.
That in-person early-voting process will run Oct. 18-Nov. 3 and, per elections officials’ expectations, could eclipse Election Day activity. N.C. State Board of Elections Deputy Director Johnnie McLean said in 2008 more voters cast ballots as absentees than at the polls. (Related story)
More information about postal voting and how to request a ballot is available here.
More information about one-stop voting is available here.
