In-person early voting begins for November elections; voters will be asked to show photo ID

Press release from North Carolina State Board of Elections:

In-person early voting for the November 2023 municipal elections begins Thursday, October 19, and ends Saturday, November 4 for voters in about 385 North Carolina municipalities.

Across the state, about 465 cities, towns, and villages in 86 counties are conducting elections this November. Eighty of these municipalities do not use early and absentee voting. In those cities and towns, all voters cast their ballot on Election Day, which is Tuesday, November 7.

Early voting sites and schedules are available at the State Board of Elections’ Early Voting Site Search and at One-Stop Voting Sites for the Nov. 7 Election (PDF). Statewide, 135 early voting sites will be open for the November elections.

Voters must live and be registered to vote in a municipality to vote in its elections. To find out if you’re eligible to vote in 2023, go to the State Board’s Voter Search tool, available at NCSBE.gov, and look for your sample ballot. If you don’t have a sample ballot attached to your voter record, then you are not eligible for any contests in November.

The State Board of Elections encourages all eligible voters to cast a ballot in these important municipal elections.

“The candidates elected in November will make important decisions for local communities, such as setting tax rates, approving new developments, deciding how many police officers and firefighters to hire, and choosing where to build parks and sidewalks,” said Karen Brinson Bell, State Board executive director and the state’s chief elections official. “If history is a guide, some municipal contests will be very, very close, and ties are not unheard of, so every vote matters.”

What’s New in 2023?

All voters will be asked to show a photo ID.

This means that voters should bring an acceptable form of photo ID with them to their voting site. Voters who vote by mail should include a photocopy of an acceptable ID when they return their ballot.

Most voters will simply show their driver’s license, but many other types of IDs will be accepted. The list of acceptable IDs is available on the State Board of Elections’ Voter ID webpage, NCSBE.gov/voterID.

And any voter who does not have an acceptable form of ID can still get one, at no cost, from their county board of elections between now and the end of the early voting period, November 4.

Any registered voter can go to their county elections office, provide their name, date of birth, and last four digits of their Social Security number, and have their photo taken.

Voters who do not have an ID should not let this deter them from casting their ballot. They can still vote a provisional ballot and fill out an ID Exception Form as to why they were unable to show an ID.

As an alternative, if a voter has an ID but forgets to bring it to their voting site, they can vote and then return to the county board office after Election Day and before the county canvass and show an ID to have their ballot counted. The county canvass occurs 10 days after Election Day, so a voter returning with their ID has until the ninth day after election day to bring in their ID.

Comprehensive information about the photo ID requirement is available at NCSBE.gov/voterID.