Republican lawmakers consider shortening NC’s early voting period

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing proposals that would shorten the state’s early, in-person voting period and eliminate a Sunday voting day statewide.

Two bills moving through the General Assembly, Senate Bill 1084 and House Bill 66, would reduce the number of early voting days before elections.

The Senate proposal would cut early in-person voting from 17 days to 10 in all 100 counties and eliminate one Sunday of voting statewide. The House version would shorten the period from 17 days to 13, also removing a Sunday voting day.

Early voting is the most popular method of casting a ballot. Most North Carolinians vote early rather than on Election Day.

Republicans say the early-voting period needs to be truncated to help county election officials manage costs and staffing. Republican leaders say cutting early voting also would ease staffing shortages and operational strain on the 100 county election offices that must recruit workers and operate polling sites for more than two straight weeks. 

Democrats worry it could hurt them in November. In recent elections, voters supporting Democratic candidates utilized early voting at a greater rate than those supporting Republican candidates. In the state’s U.S. Senate race, for instance, about 49% of voters in the March Democratic primary voted early, compared with 43% of those who voted in the Republican primary. And Black voters, who are overwhelmingly affiliated with the Democratic Party, have historically used Sunday voting to drive turnout through “souls to the polls” programs.

“Every single person should have the ability to vote,” Senate Minority Leader Sydney Batch said in April. “Not just in the 10 days that has been recently proposed, but in the actual three weeks that we already have with regards to early voting.”

A previous GOP-backed effort to target Sunday voting was struck down in court as unconstitutional for being driven by discriminatory intent..

“Certainly in the primary, 17 days of early voting just seemed pretty excessive,” state Senate leader Phil Berger said in April. “It really stresses the local boards of elections in finding the people to run the offices and those sorts of things.”

The cost of running elections falls primarily on local county governments, particularly after the state legislature voted in 2023 to ban counties from accepting grants from nonprofits to help ease the costs.

County election officials across the state say they agree staffing has become increasingly difficult during the lengthy voting window.

“If it is 10 days, you have a bigger pool of staffing levels,” said Olivia McCall, director of the Wake County Board of Elections. “Getting people to take 17 days off has been a challenge.”

McCall said if either of the bills become law, Wake County would consider increasing the number of early voting sites it has to expand access. 

State elections officials told WRAL that many counties — particularly smaller ones with limited staff — support reducing the number of early voting days.

“A big part of this are the sites, you know, where voting is taking place, so it does vary county to county,” said Jason Tyson, a spokesperson for the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “Some counties have two or three staff members, and that’s it, so it’s hard for them.”

Sunday voting

The debate over Sunday voting is expected to become one of the most contentious parts of the proposal.

Republican lawmakers have questioned whether counties need Sunday voting at all, while Democrats argue eliminating it would disproportionately affect Black voters and church-organized turnout efforts. A handful of counties around the state have recently begun chipping away at Sunday voting, in efforts that have been supported by a new Republican majority on the State Board of Elections.

But no statewide effort has made progress yet. The House bill hasn’t advanced in the legislature despite being filed more than a year ago. The Senate bill was filed this month and has yet to receive a committee hearing either.  Similar proposals in previous years have faced legal challenges alleging racial discrimination.