Fired up and Ready to Go: North Carolina Early Voting Outpaces 2008 on First Day

Final statewide numbers for Thursday's turnout won't be available until Friday morning, but ballots surpassed the 2008 first-day count of 117,372, said state Board of Elections Director Gary Bartlett.

Early voting in North Carolina got off to a fast start Thursday, surpassing first-day vote counts from 2008, as candidates and campaigns continued to encourage voters to hit the polls early.

Throngs of people swamped one-stop voting locations statewide and waited for up to an hour to cast ballots. In Wake County, votes outpaced 2008 numbers by nearly one and a half times.

"For a very first day of early voting, I do think we've had a much better turnout than in 2008," said Cherie Poucher, elections director for Wake County.

In 2008, 7,917 ballots were cast on the first day of early voting at five one-stop voting sites across Wake County, Poucher said. On Thursday, with three additional early voting sites, Wake County received 11,245 ballots – a 42 percent increase.

http://www.wral.com/throngs-swamp-early-voting-sites-in-nc/11673771/