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amlico County residents who want to vote in the primaries or in the Pamlico School Board election on May 6, have to be registered to vote by Friday April 11 at 5p. Even if you planned to vote in the early voting period, April 11 is still your deadline for being registered.

Sample ballots, color coded for Republican, Democrat and Libertarian primaries as well as for unaffiliated voters. In order to cast a ballot on May 6 or in the early voting period voters will have to be registered by April 11, according to the changes in the voting laws.

That marks a change. No longer can new Pamlico County voters register at the time they wanted to cast an early ballot at the courthouse — right up to days before an election. The North Carolina Legislature’s Republican majority last year eliminated that opportunity when it changed many parts of North Carolina’s voting procedures and Governor Pat McCrory signed them in to law.

Photo ID: “The Tip Of The Iceberg”

Last year, as Republicans pushed for the changes and Democrats fought them saying they targetted Democratic-leaning voters, much of the attention focused on what was called Voter ID — the requirement that voters would have to present a photo ID when they went to vote.

An Elon University poll last year found 72 percent of those surveyed in NC supported that concept. But the Republican majority in the Legislature made changes to the voting laws that go beyond the photo ID requirement, as voters will start to see in this primary election.

At the Pamlico Board of Elections, the staff is now implementing the changes in what was known as House Bil 589. Elections Supervisor Lisa Bennett says the photo ID requirement “was just the tip of the iceberg.”

Early Voting Cut Back A Week

For example, the Legislature cut back the early voting period. Instead of the 17 day period in the past, a week has been sliced off. Early voting will be limited to a 10-day spread (and unlike before, there will be no Sunday voting and only one Saturday of early voting.)

Pamlico County Elections Supervisor, Lisa Bennett says the photo ID requirement was just the tip of the iceberg. Photo ID’s will be required in 2016. A number of other changes to voting are taking hold this year.

For this primary/school board election, the early voting period will start on Thursday April 24 and close on May 3. The weekday hours will be 8a-5p except on Thursday and Friday, May 1 & 2, when the hours will be 8a-8p and the final day, Saturday May 3 when it’ll be 8a-1p.

Was 113 Hours, Now, 74

In the mid-term primaries of 2010, says Lisa Bennett, Pamlico County voters had 113 hours of early voting spread over 2-and-a-half-weeks. Last year’s legislation stipulated that the same number of early voting hours as were offered four years earlier could be made available for early voting this time. But, the legislation also dictated that those hours had to be compressed in to the 10 day stretch rather than the 17 day early voting period that voters had before.

Pamlico County’s Bennett said that to pack the 113 hours in to the ten days would have meant 13-14 hour days for her staff. The local Board of Elections opted to have 2 12-hour days of early voting, but in the end voters are losing 39 hours of early voting. There will be 74 hours of early voting between April 24 and May 3.

No More Registering During Early Voting

In the May 2010 primary and school board elections over the course of 17 days, 277 Pamlico voters went to the courthouse to cast early ballots. Technically, it is called one-stop voting, in that voters would ask to be able to vote absentee and then do so.

In recent years, first time voters in Pamlico County — and elsewhere in NC — could register and vote at the same time during the early-voting period. In the spring primaries of 2010 – the comparable primary voting period to this season – 15 people registered to vote during the one-stop early voting, says Lisa Bennett.

If those 15 new voters tried to do that this year, they couldn’t.

Gene Lupton of Lowland of the Pamlico County Board of Elections. The three-member board – Lupton, fellow Republican and Chairwoman Jennifer Roe and Democrat Delcine Gibbs – was tasked with implementing the Legislature’s changes in the voting law here in Pamlico County. (Lupton, Roe and Gibbs are testing the voting machines this week, as the Board always has in advance of voting.)

Deadline For Registering Comes Earlier: April 11

The overhaul of the voting laws – HB 589, aka the Voter ID law – eliminated voter registration during early voting. Now, voters new to the county will have to make the separate trip of registering at the courthouse by 5p on April 11 in order to vote in the May 6 primary/school board race. They will need to meet that deadline even if they want to vote early.

If a voter chooses to be unaffiliated, says Lisa Bennett, they will still have the option, on Primary Day, of choosing which primary they care to vote in. They may not switch from one party to the other on Primary Day.

Voter ID Law: Just Asking For Now

As for the actual Voter ID law, NC voters will not have to show that photo ID — drivers license, military ID, passport, tribal ID being on the short list of acceptable IDs — until they vote in 2016. However, voters will see some aspects of it in play this year.

Starting with the early voting this spring, poll workers will, by law, have to start asking voters if they possess a photo ID which they will need to show in two years in order to cast a ballot. The poll workers will have to take down information of who says they do and don’t have that ID, says Lisa Bennett. That data will then be compiled in to a report.

Delcine Gibbs, of Pamlico Board of Elections, who with fellow members, Jennifer Roe and Gene Lupton was testing the machines in early April. These machines will be delivered to the various precincts for the May 6 primary. The early voting will take place only in this location, at the Board of Elections, at the Pamlico County Courthouse.

According to the state’s plan, says Bennett, those who say they don’t have a photo ID will later be sent information telling them that they can get one at the Department of Motor Vehicles office at no charge if they present their birth or marriage certificate. Those birth and marriage documents will be made available to them at no charge by the Register of Deeds in their county of birth or marriage. (If they need to use a birth or marriage document from another state, they may have to pay to get that document.)

Bennett says she also expects those lists of who says they don’t have a voter ID to be of interest to various political groups.

Next Generation Can No Longer Pre-Register

Lisa Bennett says that 17-year olds may vote in the May 10 primary races if they will be 18 in time for the November elections. (The thinking being that they are taking a role in picking only their party’s choice. The 17-year-olds may not cast ballots, however, in the non-partisan school board race on May 6 because it’s a final election.)

ONe of the changes in the voting law affects the next generation of voters. 16 and 17 year-olds used to be able to pre-register before they turned 18, something advocated by outreach programs in the schools. No more. Now they have to wait til they’re 18 and then proactively register. As for the outreach program in the high schools to get kids involved with the voting process, that was eliminated by the Legislature as well.

Dates for this Primary and School Board Elections

April 11: Deadline to register to vote, 5p April 24: Early voting period opens. Voting is at the courthouse. May 3: Early voting period closes May 6: Election Day. Oriental area voters vote at Straight Road firestation

Posted Thursday April 3, 2014 by Melinda Penkava