Early voting in North Carolina ended Saturday afternoon with a surge of Black voters heading to the polls. Comparing the Sunday final report with the Saturday 6 am report, of the final 60,708 early voters in the Democratic primary, 47.8% were Black and 47.6% white (the remainder were American Indian, Asian, or no race was listed on their registration record.)

Based on the state maintained early voter database, of the 387,049 Democratic primary ballots, 40.6% were cast by Black voters and 57.3% by whites.

see updated diary at
http://www.dailykos.com/... covering Saturday

Early voting in North Carolina is through the roof. As of close of business Friday, there had been 326,341 Democratic ballots cast (275,329 Democrats + 51,012 Unaffiliated), 72,280 GOP ballots (63,863 Republicans + 8417 unaffiliated) and 912 unaffiliated voters just voted the nonpartisan judicial ballot.
Based on the state maintained early voter database, of the Democratic ballots, 39.3% were cast by Black voters and 57.3% by whites.  The cumulative black turnout rose by 0.5% yesterday, meaning the one day rise was far sharper.

I previously diaried about early voting in North Carolina, reporting data that the first 99,000 Democratic primary voters broke down 38% Black and 59% White and later with 175,238 Democratic ballots cast the numbers changed slightly to 38.5% Black and 58.1% White.  Now after two more days of early voting (with just two days left before the Saturday 1 pm deadline) there have been 260,939 Democratic ballots cast with the Black percentage rising to 38.8% and the White dropping to 57.7%. Most pollsters are estimating a minority turnout of 33%. While it remains to be seen whether election day turnout matches early voter demographics, the minority percentage has actually been increasing as early voting has progressed, indicating a steadily increasing interest in the Black community.

37.7% of registered Democrats are black according to North Carolina State Board of Elections statistics, while of registered Democrats casting early votes so far, 42.6% are Black. Just 2.4% of unaffiliated voters are Black, but 18.6% of the unaffiliated voters casting early voting ballots are Black.

This morning I pulled in data for the first nine days of early voting (through Friday) in North Carolina and did a breakdown of Democratic primary in person (one-stop, the statute calls them) early voters by race, also breaking down by whether the voters themselves were D or U. NC allows unaffiliated to vote in either primary but does not allow party crossovers.

Of the Democrats, 42% were Black, 55% White, 1% Native American, the remaining 2% were Asian, other, multi-race, or did not list a race.

Of the Unaffiliated 16% were Black, 78% White, 1% Native American, the remaining 4% were Asian, other, multi-race, or did not list a race.

Of the total pool of early voters in the Democratic primary, 38% were Black, 59% White, 1% Native American, the remaining 2% were Asian, other, multi-race, or did not list a race.

LEGISLATIVE LEADERS CREATE SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO EXAMINE VOTING PROBLEMS AND RECOMMEND WAYS TO IMPROVE ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS

RALEIGH - Legislative leaders have established the Joint Select Committee on Electronic Voting Systems to recommend solutions to recent problems across North Carolina with computer ballot systems and ensure that all votes cast in future elections are counted and verified.

Speakers Jim Black and Richard Morgan and Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight created the 13-member group in lieu of a smaller study commission that was authorized during this year's legislative session.

The committee will be co-chaired by Senator Eleanor Kinnaird, D-Orange; Senator Austin Allran, R-Catawba; Representative Verla Insko, D-Orange; and Susan Adams, secretary of the Moore County Board of Elections.

Cards and letters for Elizabeth Edwards can be
mailed to:
Elizabeth Edwards
c/o Ann Berry
P.O. Box 75428
Washington, DC 20013
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If you want to post e-mail well wishes to Elizabeth here, I will e-mail her a link to this diary.

A federal judge issued an order early Monday barring political party challengers from polling places throughout Ohio during Tuesday's election.

U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places is unconstitutional.

She said the presence of challengers inexperienced in the electoral process questioning voters about their eligibility would impede voting.

Dlott ruled on a lawsuit by a black Cincinnati couple who said Republican plans to deploy challengers to largely black precincts in Hamilton County was meant to intimidate and block black voters.

Republicans said they wanted to prevent voter fraud.

Dlott said in her preliminary injunction order that the evidence "does not indicate that the presence of additional challengers would serve Ohio's interest in preventing voter fraud better than would the system of election judges ..."

In Orange County, early voting as a % of 2000 total voter turnout is 61.8%, counting mail-in absentees is it 66%. In Durham, the respective numbers are 54.5% and 57%.

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1784602p-8076288c.html
http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-538910.html
http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-538906.html
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/politics/10060854.htm?1c
http://www.news-record.com/election/election2004/rockvote_103004.htm
http://www.citizen-times.com/cache/article/news/70051.shtml

more stats below fold:

Friday at 6:15 pm, 15 camera crews arrive along with 2 dozen still photographers. 10 minutes later, John and Elizabeth Edwards arrive, and at 6:35 they arrive in front of me, and I hand them their ballot. I got a chance for 30 seconds of small talk while I was pulling their ballot. It was a THRILL!

(I went to law school with both of them and Elizabeth lived in the same dorm as me junior year at Carolina)  

Cumulative  early voting 14 days through 10/27 for Wake County (Raleigh-Cary)
D        27,279    51.1%
L               49     0.1%
R        17,639    33.1%
U          8,392    15.7%
TOT    53,359

the 53,359 is 19.8%% of the total voter turnout in 2000. It represents 13.8% of all the registered Ds having voted early compared with 11.3% of all registered voters

the 31,635 is 11.8% of the total voter turnout in 2000. It represents 8.3% of all the registered Ds having voted early compared with 6.7% of all registered voters

other counties below the fold

A total of 11,289 people had cast ballots as of Tuesday night, according to Mike Ashe, director of the Durham County Board of Elections. The county's four One-Stop polling sites opened Thursday.

In comparison, there were 10,609 early ballots cast in Durham in the 2000 presidential election -- the first election for which early no-excuse voting was available. The number of people voting this year has bested that total by 680 votes, even though there are still 11 days of early voting left.

"I am very surprised and thrilled," Ashe said. "I expected huge turnouts both at the One-Stop and on Election Day, but I did not expect more than 10,000 people to vote here in the first six days."

Ashe said he expects that number will at least triple by the end of the early voting period.

"Every year we've done One-Stop, the last week has been two or three times busier than the first week," he said. "We've been doing a couple of thousand voters per day so far, and if that continues, we'd be over 30,000 or 40,000 votes by the end."
In 2000, more than 87,000 early and Election Day ballots were cast in Durham. Ashe said he estimates this year's combined figure will be closer to 110,000 votes -- meaning One-Stop voting potentially could account for more than 25 percent of all votes cast in Durham.
  Durham's early balloting continues to outpace some larger counties that have higher numbers of registered voters.

In Wake County, elections officials said 3,076 people had voted as of Monday night, with another 950 ballots estimated as cast Tuesday. Jo Winkler, deputy director of Mecklenburg County's Board of Elections, said 7,797 early voters had come out to One-Stop polling sites there as of Monday night.

But early voters in Guilford County have come out in droves. Guilford's board of elections director estimated that the early voter total there would pass 12,000 by Tuesday night.

"We are well on our way to our target, which is a minimum of 60,000 early voters and preferably 70,000," said George Gilbert, director of Guilford County's Board of Elections. "We'll be putting additional machines and additional people in the field as we move closer and closer to next week, because we know it will get busier."

Nelson
Tampa, Florida

P.S. I'm new at this and I don't know how to post comments to this blogs. Thank you!!  

DURHAM (total registered 183,322)

6021    DEM 66.5%
20    LIB  0.2%
1790    REP   19.8%
1223    UNAFF   13.5%

9054    Grand Total through Monday October 18, 2004

This 9054 is 4.9% of the total voter registration, and the 66.5% D is higher than the % of total registration in the county that is Democratic. Durham voted 66-33 for Gore in 2000.

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GUILFORD COUNTY (Greensboro) (total registered 294,409)

D 4470 51%

L 13  0

R   3371  38%

U  940  11%

TOTAL 8794

Guilford voted 51-49 for Bush in 2000

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WAKE (Raleigh) (total registered 463,353)
D    1635  51.9%
L     4   0.1%
R    1055  33.5%
U      457  14.5%
TOT 3151

Wake went to Bush 53-46 over Gore

Durham (4 sites open since Thursday, they will have all those sites open through October 30)
Thursday through Saturday:
D 3877  67.0%
L    6    0.1%
R 1107   19.1%
U  800   13.8%
TOTAL: 5790

This 5790 is 3.2% of the total voter registration, and the 3877 is 3.5% of the total Democratic registration. Durham is the most D urban county in NC, went for Gore in 2000 66% to 33%.
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Wake (Raleigh) (1 site open Thursday, will go to 13 sites on October 23). Only Thursday data is available.
D 548 53.3%
R 348 33.8%
U 132 12.9%
TOTAL 1028
Wake also has 50 provisional early votes in addition to the 1028, these are reported address changes to new precincts, these will be counted November 5 and added to the total then.

The Wake site included John Edwards' daughter Cate voting on Thursday

Wake went for BUSH over GORE in 2000 53% to 46%

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Mecklenburg (Charlotte)
1 site open Thursday, will go to 13 sites October 18. Data available just for Thursday.
D  384  52.8%
L    1   0.1%
R  241  33.0%
U  101  14.1%
TOTAL 727

Mecklenburg went for Bush over Gore by 51% to 49%