Check your list of early voting sites!

[mnhtnbb]

So it begins to limit access in this election.

I have lived in downtown Raleigh since March 2018 and have early voted at the Wake County Office Building just a few blocks from my apartment at every election since I've lived here. The Wake County Office Building is NOT an early voting site for the General Election!

I lived in Orange County, NC (Chapel Hill) for 17 years before moving to Wake County and I'm aware that the OC Board of Elections office in Hillsborough was also always an early voting site. Guess what? Not this year.

I only had to walk 4 blocks to the Wake County Office Building from my apartment. Took me about 5-6 minutes. The closest early voting site now is a 25 minute walk, according to Google. It will mean people who are living downtown will have to either take a bus, drive, get a ride, or walk much farther in order to early vote or even drop off an absentee ballot at an early voting site.

I just sent an e-mail to the Wake County Democratic Party Executive Director inquiring whether they were aware of this development.

I think my next e-mail may be to local TV stations. And I just wrote a LTTE of the local paper, too.

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Hopefully, it's not a sign of anything nefarious. I would contact the Board of Elections.

It's quite possibly a lack of poll workers. Apparently when there's a shortage of workers hard decisions have to be made about polling locations. If you are able, volunteer, if they are looking for more poll workers. Keep us posted.


Polling place search link here:

https://vt.ncsbe.gov/PPLkup/

You can also get sample ballots and the address of your local Board of Elections at the link.

❤ lmsp

[mnhtnbb]

2. I had intended to vote early in person but have now just requested an absentee ballot

Wake County has about 775,000 registered voters. Twenty early voting sites. If only 65% of the registered voters turn out (and let's hope it's higher this year)--and say half turn out for early voting--that's 251,875 possible early voters to be handled at 20 sites, or about 12,600 voters to be handled at each site (and you know some will be busier than others). Divide by 17 days of early voting (some are half days on Sat/Sun at the closest site to me) and that's 741 voters/day at each site. On full days, the particular early voting site is open 11.5 hours (or 64 voters/hour) and on 5 hour half days (148 voters/hour). Of course, people are not going to turn up in equal numbers all day long.

In theory, that looks like lines to me. As a person at high risk for COVID-19, I don't want to stand in line to vote. I never did at my downtown location where I walked to in 5 minutes--not even for the 2018 General Election.

The resident population of downtown Raleigh was estimated at 10,800 in 2019. Probably a high percentage are registered voters. To my mind, we deserve an early voting location to which we can walk, because that's why we live downtown. To walk!

And don't get me started on the distribution of African American voters in downtown vs. more suburban areas.