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Outbreak's Impact On Elections Will Be Widespread, Director Says

Voters observe social distancing guidelines as they wait in line to cast ballots at Washington High School while ignoring a stay-at-home order over the coronavirus threat to vote in the state's presidential primary election, Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

State elections officials are bracing for major impacts on voting in this year's election in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. 

Elections director Karen Bell gave a somber update to board members via a telephone meeting. Potential social distancing rules, loss of volunteers, and changes in how people are expected to vote will all have to be considered.

“As we go forward, we will not be cutting our services for in-person voting,” Bell says. “We will maintain those and deliver those actually with more care as we set up sanitation stations, as we do crowd control with stanchions and other efforts to create social distancing.”

And she's worried about the devastating potential the outbreak could have on local economies.

“We have a serious concern of making sure that we get as much money to the counties to help them in their efforts, as many of them, if not all of them, will be looking at budget cuts,” says Bell.

She says about $11 million in federal money tied to helping the state's elections will aid that effort. 

Bell has also recommended to the legislature that some money be used to expand early voting and online registration.

She says the state needs to prepare for a huge jump in mail-in ballots. They usually account for about four percent of the total votes cast, but she says that could jump tenfold.

There's a Republican runoff election in several mountain counties for the 11th District Congressional seat, and Bell says she's concerned that other states that have gone forward with primaries since the outbreak have seen poll workers resigning or not showing up.

Damon Circosta, board chairman, says we are living in a unique and novel time. “But I have no doubt that we're going to be able to conduct an accessible, secure, and fair election in November,” he says. 

For the most up-to-date information on coronavirus in North Carolina, visit our Live Updates blog here. WFDD wants to hear your stories — connect with us and let us know what you're experiencing.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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