Author: Kim Strach, Executive Director
This year’s municipal elections calendar presents a number of challenges to accomplishing all of our elections tasks in an accurate, timely manner. A recent change in the law provides the agency with the authority to amend certain overlapping election dates. On July 31, Session Law 2017-197 became law, which provides the Executive Director with authority to reduce the canvass period in 2017 elections “by whatever amount of time the Executive Director believes is necessary in order to ensure orderly elections on the election schedule otherwise required by law.” S.L. 2017-197, Part VI Section 6.8.
I hereby exercise my authority pursuant to S.L. 2017-197 to reduce the canvass periods in 2017 as follows:
- Sept. 12 election: Canvass Sept. 18 at 11 a.m.
- Oct. 10 election: Canvass Oct. 16 at 11 a.m.
Other deadlines that are tied to the date of the county canvass, such as deadlines for filing of election protests, submission of abstracts to the State Board, sample audit counts and recount requests, are adjusted accordingly. The deadline for provisional voters to submit HAVA documents to the county board of elections1 is Sept. 15 at 5 p.m. for the September election and Oct. 13 at 5 p.m. for the October election.
The time reductions dramatically decrease the amount of time to complete the essential postelection audits but do not eliminate the need to conduct all of these audits. We are working to ensure each of you have the support you need to assure the accuracy of every contest conducted this year.
1 See G.S. § 163-82.4(e).
↓ Canvass Dates for 2017 Municipal Elections: Numbered Memo 2017-04 (PDF)