Some U.S. voters will get to cast their ballots in the 2024 election any day now as the very first ballots of the cycle started going out on Friday.
The crucial battleground state of North Carolina began to mail its first ballots on September 6 with sixty days to go before Election Day.
It is the first state in the country to start sending out ballots as the campaign season kicks in to high gear for the final stretch.
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are looking to secure the key swing state and its sixteen electoral votes while the Tar Heel State also has one of the most contentious governor races of 2024.
Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020. But the latest polls show a neck-and-neck race with the ex-president leading the vice president by just over half a point according to the Real Clear Politics average.
North Carolina is the first state in the country to start making out ballots ahead of the 2024 election. The first ballots go out on September 60, sixty days before election day on November 5
The Harris campaign sees North Carolina as one of its opportunities of a state Democrats can flip come November and have been spending both time and money there.
The first ballots go out before Harris and Trump even come face-to-face on the debate stage for the first time as their much anticipated primetime showdown is scheduled for September 10 in Philadelphia. The first ballots go out in Pennsylvania September 16.
But Professor Chris Cooper of Western Carolina University does not believe North Carolina’s early vote-by-mail start date having a big electoral effect for either candidate.
‘Let’s just say send it out 45 days before the election instead of sixty, I don’t know that we would see much of a different outcome,’ Cooper said. ‘The same people would likely still cast a vote then.’
He offered two pieces of evidence however as to why it could potentially be beneficial to Harris along the margins: mail in voting has been used more often by Democrats in recent years and Harris is still riding an enthusiasm boost from when the ticket switched from President Biden.
‘It’s hard to hold enthusiasm for months at a time,’ he noted.
The first ballots in North Carolina are mailed out before Kamala Harris and Donald Trump come face-to-face on the debate stage on September 10
North Carolina begins sending out mail ballots to all voters who request them including military personnel and overseas voters sixty days out.
Voters can make the request for an ‘absentee-by-mail’ ballot either by filling out the official form online, by mailing with a paper form or by dropping one off in person.
Voters in the swing state do not need any excuse to vote by mail. While the first ballots are headed out on Friday, voters have until seven days before the election on November 5 to request a mail ballot.
More than one million people voted by mail in the North Carolina 2020 election, but it took place at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Another 3.6 million voted early in person.
In 2022, less than 190,000 people voted absentee by mail in the midterms while more than two million opted to vote early in person.
Election workers stuff absentee ballot applications in North Carolina in September 2020. The number of people who voted by mail in the last presidential election skyrocketed due to the pandemic but it dropped back down in 2022
‘It is usually a relatively small proportion of the overall ballots cast, so two to three percentage points,’ said Cooper of vote-by-mail in the state. ‘2020 it skyrocketed to about one in every five ballots cast, and then in 2022, it went back down.’
Cooper called it ‘significant in a state like North Carolina,’ but expects it to pale in comparison to in person voting either early or on Election Day.
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What to know as the first voting in the presidential election gets underway next month
Early in-person voting begins in North Carolina on October 17.
There are some changes for voting this year either in person or by mail in the state. Voters who mail their ballots must include a photocopy of an acceptable ID or complete a photo ID exception form to return with their mailed absentee ballot packet.
Harris made a visit to North Carolina in August to deliver her first policy address about the economy in Raleigh. It came just after Trump was also in the state also to deliver remarks focused on the economy.
The stops were among several by both nominees there this year. Most recently, Harris’ running mate Tim Walz headed to North Carolina after campaigning in Georgia last week.
Democrats have been ramping up their efforts to flip the state. The latest polling shows Trump up by less than a point. He won it by less than 75,000 votes in the last presidential election.
The last Democrat to win North Carolina in a presidential election was former President Obama in 2008. Democrats see it as one of the few battlegrounds they could add to their column since 2020.
The state is known for its independent streak. While Trump won it in 2016 and 2020, North Carolina also elected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
Voters in North Carolina will also be voting for governor between Robinson and Stein
This year’s governor race between Republican Lt. Governor Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein has been a brutal one. The latest Real Clear Politics average has Stein up by nearly nine points.
Traditionally, Republicans were more likely to cast their ballots by mail, partly because of the number in the military but that shifted when Trump started questioning mailing ballots in 2020. More Republicans listened to him while Democrats opted to do the opposite.
There are ongoing efforts by some Republicans to make sure their voters use every option available to them to cast a vote even if it means voting by mail.