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This edition of NCOT highlights the final push as both campaigns are hitting North Carolina hard, huge early voting numbers, two important down ticket races, the deplorable state of prisons after Helene, and Asheville’s long road back to potable water.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections has announced that early voting in North Carolina reached a record number of voters.
As of Friday, Nov. 1, more than 3,798,000 voters cast their ballots in person during the early voting period, which started on Oct. 17.
According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, the total number of early voters in 2024 breaks the previous record of 3,629,000 in-person early voters voting in 2020.
The State Board of Elections also reports that 65 percent of voters used the early voting period to cast their ballots in 2020.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump rally supporters in North Carolina on Saturday
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump rallied supporters in North Carolina on Saturday as they enter the final leg of the presidential race with focused attention on this battleground state.
Saturday was the last day of early voting, which has broken turnout records. More than 4 million North Carolina voters have already cast their ballots.
Harris held a rally in Charlotte. Trump spoke in Gastonia on Saturday morning and had a rally scheduled for Greensboro on Saturday night. He’s scheduled to be in Kinston on Sunday and in Raleigh on Monday.
The crowd in Charlotte cheered when Harris asked how many people had already voted. She encouraged them to talk to family, friends, and neighbors about the importance of going to the polls on Tuesday.
“For anyone who hasn’t voted yet, no judgment, but please get to it,” she said. “You will make the difference in this election.”
Presidential candidates crisscross North Carolina in final campaign push
Both presidential candidates are making one last round throughout North Carolina ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5.
Former President Trump is scheduled to visit Kinston on Sunday, Nov. 3, following stops in Greensboro and Gastonia on Nov. 2. He will also hold a rally in Raleigh the day before Election Day.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris visited Charlotte with Governor Cooper on Nov. 2., with First Lady Jill Biden coming to North Carolina on Monday, Nov. 4, making a final push for Harris in the southern swing state.
JD Vance closes with a unity pitch in Selma. Trump’s violent rhetoric got in the way.
Vance’s pledge that Trump would be a president for all Americans was drowned out by his running mate’s musings about Liz Cheney being shot.
In a rally in Selma Friday, vice presidential nominee JD Vance closed with a pledge that would be ordinary in any other election: Donald Trump would be “the president for all of us,” not just his supporters.
But the message was overshadowed by the former president’s own words from the prior evening, when he told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he’d like to see his political opponent Liz Cheney “with nine barrels shooting at her” — a violent remark that dominated the headlines Friday.
Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, tried to paint Democrats as divisive and his own ticket as unifying — condemning President Joe Biden for calling Trump supporters “garbage” while countering that he and Trump had never attacked Vice President Kamala Harris’s voters. Trump, though, has repeatedly referred to Democratic voters as “lunatics” and an “enemy from within.”
Competitive NC race will help determine which party controls the U.S. House
(NC-1) One of the only competitive U.S. House seats in the Southeast is in North Carolina. Gerrymandering, shifting political coalitions and an unpopular Democratic president have turned a once solidly Democratic district in rural North Carolina into a tossup.
Voters in an often-overlooked part of North Carolina have garnered immense national attention this year: The contest to represent the rural northeastern region of the state in the U.S. House of Representatives is one of the only competitive congressional races in the Southeast.
Republican challenger Laurie Buckhout, a defense contracting consultant and recent transplant to North Carolina who has injected at least $1.7 million of her own money into her campaign, is seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis by touting her conservative views, her success in business and the fact that, unlike Davis, she hasn’t spent years in politics.
Davis, a Presbyterian minister who grew up picking tobacco in Snow Hill outside Greenville, has also served as his hometown’s mayor and state senator. He’s counting on those local ties and his reputation as a political moderate — willing to vote against his party if he sees it as going too far left — to help carry him over the finish line.
North Carolina schools will have a new leader next year. Here’s what you need to know
Democrat Mo Green or Republican Michele Morrow will oversee the implementation of state education laws, overcoming lingering Covid-19 learning loss and more than $13 billion in state and federal funds for 1.5 million students.
A WRAL News Poll conducted last week by survey partner SurveyUSA shows Morrow and Green are virtually tied. Morrow leads 42% to 41%, though that’s well within the poll’s credibility interval.
The tight race has gained national attention, and it could indicate divergent views on what the electorate wants in its schools in part because Green and Morrow are drastically different candidates.
“In past races, it was a much lower profile kind of race in which got no national attention and really little attention from North Carolinians, because the races ended up being about relatively minor differences between the candidates,” said David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College in Raleigh. “Now we see some pretty dramatic differences between the two candidates,” largely on cultural issues, such as race and LGTBQ+ rights.
Green isn’t promising much in the way of change from recent superintendent administrations when it comes to race or LGBTQ+ issues. He supports equity measures and isn’t calling for changes to how sexuality is broached in classrooms. Morrow, however, brings an outsider’s perspective: she’s a homeschool mom who worked as a nurse and has spent the past few years as a critic of pubic schools, calling them “indoctrination centers.”
Human, civil rights call on NC officials to ease prison overcrowding
Advocates say transfers resulting from Hurricane Helene have created dangerous conditions in multiple facilities
A coalition of eight North Carolina human and civil rights groups are demanding the release of nearly 2,000 incarcerated people to ease what they are calling “dangerous, inhumane overcrowding,” in state prisons — a situation exacerbated by Hurricane Helene.
“The state is incapable of properly providing humane conditions and constitutional care for the people who are inside of prisons, and as a result, it has a constitutional duty to rectify that situation,” said Dawn Blagrove, executive director of Emancipate NC, in this morning press conference at the NC Correctional Institution for Women.
Last month, the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction announced that it transferred 2,190 people from five prisons in western North Carolina to facilities in the central and eastern parts of the state due to the storm.
‘Confined near their waste’: NC advocates call for WNC prisoners release after Helene
11/1/2024
Hurricane Helene caused damage to several prisons in Western North Carolina, causing hundreds of inmates to be transferred to other facilities.
When Tropical Storm Helene swept through Western North Carolina Sept. 27, it devastated the region, washing away homes and towns with its floodwaters and killing more than 100 people The damage included several prisons, causing inmates to be transferred to other facilities. Those transfers led to overcrowding and inhumane conditions, several North Carolina human rights organizations say.
Those groups are now calling on the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction to release hundreds of inmates to reduce overcrowding and improve conditions.
The ACLU of North Carolina, Emancipate NC, Disability Rights North Carolina, among others delivered a joint letter Oct. 31 to the department asking for the release of at least 400 women and 1,500 men.
Drinkable water to be restored by mid-December. Multiple factors at play, another warns.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Water restoration in the City of Asheville has a long-awaited timeline, according to Asheville City Council member Maggie Ullman.
In an Instagram video posted Friday morning, Ullman said there is a “Plan B” if the aluminum sulfate treatment (alum) treatment does not sufficiently reduce the sediment at the North Fork Reservoir. The plans will bring “an end to this crisis, hell or high water,” she said.
The Army Corps of Engineers will build mobile filtration systems all along the dam, City Water Resources spokesperson Clay Chandler confirmed to BPR. The temporary filters are designed to reduce the sediment in the water enough to allow it to be pumped into the regular filtration system.
The mid-December timeline set by the Corps is a “best-case scenario,” Chandler said.
Harris winning North Carolina & Georgia – NY Times – strong early voting for Kamala
by FishOutofWater
New York Times / Siena polling which has been leaning towards Trump for weeks has turned towards V.P. Harris in their last poll before the Tuesday election, with Kamala ahead in North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada. We have had an extraordinary early voting turnout in North Carolina with older Republicans turning out at higher rates than previous election cycles. Despite that strong GOP turn out, NY Times / Siena polling of those early voters gives Kamala a big lead with early voters. This is extremely good news for Kamala and very bad news for Trump. The late undecided voters may very well be Nikki Haley Republicans who voted for Harris. That would explain why such an apparently favorable early GOP turn out has had such unfavorable results for Trump.
Rates of early voting are particularly high in North Carolina, where more than half the voters said they had already cast a ballot. Ms. Harris wins early voters in the state by 8 percentage points, perhaps contributing to her three-percentage-point edge in the survey of the state. Despite recent devastation there from Hurricane Helene, more than nine out of 10 North Carolina voters said that the storm and its aftermath have had no impact at all on their ability to vote.
Thanks for reading, I hope you found these stories interesting and worth your time. I’m finding it hard to even imagine what next week’s edition might hold. Good luck, be safe, and let’s win this thing!
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