Early voting crowds continue to show up

After six days of early voting in Wake County the crowds of people continue to show up at the 20 sites, far outpacing voter turnout in any recent election.

At the end of day Tuesday an unofficial count at the Wake County Board of Elections counted 136,850 people who had voted in person, 4,412 of those in Wake Forest, which has had long lines because there is little room in the Northern Regional Center for the 6-foot spaces needed between voting booths, the registration desk and the other necessities for voting. Other sites across the county like the Herbert C. Young Community Center in Cary registered far more voters, 9,320.

At the end of Tuesday, 17.3 percent of Wake County’s 789,515 registered voters had voted. The count does not include mail-in ballots.

If you want to avoid those long lines, go to bit.ly/evwaittimes or to www.wakegov.com, select Departments and Divisions, select Board of Elections and at the top of the page there is a tab for Early Voting Estimated Wait Times which is updated at least every hour.

The wait time at the Northern Regional Center continues to be 1 to 2 hours, but the Wake Tech North Campus site on Perry Creek Road is 5 to 10 minutes and 10 to 30 minutes at the Abbott’s Creek Community Center off Durant Road. Both are convenient for Wake Forest voters. Warning: The times cited for Wake Tech and Abbott’s Creek were true just after 11 a.m. Wednesday. Conditions may have changed by the time you look.

There is an advantage in going to the Wake County site because it also gives readers much more information, including the gender of voters – 70,083 voters were women and 54,817 were men with 11,589 undesignated. Also, 63,014 were Democratic, 29,462 were Republican and 43,367 were unaffiliated with 40 votes by Constitution affiliates, 53 by Green Party and 553 by Libertarian.

Most voters, 79,672, were white; 34,324 were Black or African American. The only significant other group was 13,693 labeled as undesignated.

Finally, the largest group of voters was people 40 to 65 though there were at least a few in their late 90s who voted. There was a large block of voters from 20 to 40.

There have been no reported incidents involving early voting except the one in Wake Forest on Friday when Gary Pendleton, a former county commissioner, pushed the election judge after he was denied entry into the voting site before it opened at 8 a.m. He has been charged with a misdemeanor for the alleged assault.

Early voting in person will continue through Saturday, Oct. 31. We will then have two days to wait until Election Day on Nov. 3.

A Wake voter can vote at any of the 20 early voting sites. You can also register to vote and then vote. Each site will have curbside voting for people who cannot enter the building because of age, disability, a medical condition that puts them at heightened risk of COVID-19 or symptons of COVID-19.

You can visit WakeVotesEarly.com for an interactive map, hours, details about each of the 20 sites, answers to frequently asked questions and more. You can also download a sample ballot customized to your address at ReadyToVote.com.

The hours at all sites are:

*Weekdays from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

*Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and

*Sundays from 1 to 6 p.m.

*On the last day of early voting, Saturday, Oct. 31, sites will be open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Because of the pandemic, there are new safety procedures this year to make sure you, your fellow voters and the election officials are safe. Voters will be provided masks if they are not wearing one, hand sanitizer and single-use pens to mark their ballots. The election officials will wear proper personal protective equipment, they will sanitize surfaces between votes and ensure everyone is following the social distancing guidelines.

After the voter fills out his ballot, it is run through a tabulating machine that photographs the ballot and stores it in a bin. The tabulators are never connected to another machine or to the internet.

If you still want to request a ballot by mail you can do so. Remember the last day to request that mail ballot is Oct. 27. Election officials urge you to request your mail ballot as soon as you can, fill it out and return it quickly by mail or to the Elections office at

On Oct. 14, The News & Observer reported that there were lengthy delays between a person requesting a mail-in ballot and the time it was received by the voter. There were not any estimates about the length of time between the person mailing the ballot and the acknowledgement that it had been received and accepted. Because of this, area people may consider voting early in person.

The Wake County Board of Elections – and all the election boards across the state — have been examining and tabulating the returned mail ballots since Sept. 29. They will continue to do so weekly. This early tabulation with counting beginning early on Election Day will make sure North Carolina will be able to announce the final votes on Election Day night or soon after.

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