“One-Stop,” in-person early voting is under way for primary voters in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes 17 counties in Eastern North Carolina and stretches from Camp Lejeune to the Virginia border.
The early voting period ends Friday, April 26. Sites and schedules by county are available here. Eligible individuals who aren’t yet registered to vote may register and cast a ballot at any early voting location in their county.
Primaries are being held for the Democratic Party (six candidates), Libertarian Party (two candidates) and Republican Party (17 candidates). Members affiliated with a particular political party may participate only in that party’s primary. Unaffiliated voters may vote in any one party’s primary.
After the first day of in-person early voting on Wednesday and a couple weeks of absentee-by-mail voting, 1,366 voters had cast ballots in the 3rd District primaries, or 0.3 percent of the roughly 474,000 eligible, registered voters in the district. Additional absentee statistics are available on the State Board’s website.
To find out if you are eligible to vote in the 3rd Congressional District election or to view your sample ballot, go to the State Board of Elections’ “Voter Lookup” tool.
The special election is necessary because of the vacancy created by the recent death of Congressman Walter Jones. Primary Election Day is April 30. A second primary, if necessary, would be July 9, and if there’s no second primary, the general election would be July 9. If there’s a second primary, the general election would be September 10. The candidate who receives the second-highest number of votes may demand a second primary if no candidate receives more than 30 percent of the votes. The top two vote-getters would be on the ballot for the second primary.
Voter photo identification is not required in any North Carolina election in 2019. It will be required to vote in 2020, with exceptions.