North Carolina accepted 1,050,226 in-person early votes by 21 October, about 13% of its 7.9m registrations, according to North Carolina State Board of Elections data files12. By party registration, Democrats cast 43%, unaffiliated voters 34% and Republicans 23%. Party registration does not show how anyone voted, and a third of early voters belong to neither party. Monday 19 October was the busiest day, with 203,580.
The board had 2,133 mail ballots received but not counted on 22 October, up from 1,400 on 15 October, or 4.0% of those returned34. Separately, the board adopted an inner-envelope rule on 4 September on a party-line vote; the data files do not give reasons for each ballot not counted. A mail voter seals the ballot in an inner envelope and posts it inside an outer one. The board now rejects any ballot whose inner envelope is unsealed, or that arrives in the outer envelope with no inner one. The same board ran its rolls through SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) citizenship database, earlier this month.
Judge Thomas Schroeder, sitting in North Carolina's Middle District federal court, refused to block the rule on 19 October. He found the challengers waited too long and relief "infeasible" with voting under way5. He pointed to the state's notice-and-cure process: the board tells voters of a fixable fault and gives them time to fix it.
In the Senate race, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) put $1.43m behind the Democrat, Roy Cooper, in September, and WinSenate has reported $7.03m in the state67.
