Voters can’t start queuing up at the first actual polling locations until next Thursday, Oct. 16, but as of Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 8, more than 462 people in Orange County had already voted.
County Board of Elections director Tracey Reams said turnout is expected to be heavy and the elections office has been steadily training workers to get ready for the start of one-stop voting next week.
“We’re pretty much doubling our staff and all our equipment at the one-stops,†she said.
One early indication of the turnout is that so far, with the deadline to request mail-in ballots not until Oct. 28, more than 2,599 absentee ballots have been sent out by the elections office and 462 completed and returned. That compares to 3,039 total mail-in absentee ballots in the 2004 presidential race.
Registration numbers are also soaring. On Jan. 1, 2007, Orange County had roughly 89,467 registered voters. By the May primary, the number of voters had swelled to roughly 96,000 and as of Wednesday afternoon Reams reported the rolls had reached 101,788.
The breakdown, she said, is 54,248 Democrats, 19,420 Republicans, 61 Libertarians and 28,059 unaffiliated.
That number will continue to climb. Reams said the elections office is still processing 2,500 registrations that arrived earlier in the week.
This year, the push is on to educate voters about the new registration rules. If you want to vote on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 4, you must register by Friday. If you miss that deadline, you can still register and vote under the state’s new same-day registration system at one-stop voting centers in your county.
In Orange County, there are five one-stop sites — at the Orange County Library in Hillsborough, Carrboro Town Hall, the Seymour Senior Center, Morehead Planetarium and in the northern portion of Orange County at the Northern Human Services Center on Hwy. 86.