NORTH CAROLINA, USA — The races in North Carolina remain close, and if a majority of the hundreds of thousands of outstanding absentee ballots are postmarked by election day and returned by Nov. 12, it could have an impact on the close races.
As of Thursday evening, races in North Carolina, including the presidential race, still haven't been called.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections website said there are 116,200 outstanding absentee ballots. That is an approximate number of voters who requested an absentee ballot and have not voted, however, it does not yet account for voters who cast a ballot on Election Day, according to the website.
Absentee ballots can be accepted and counted by boards of elections if they are postmarked by Election Day, Nov.3, 2020, and received by the local board of elections office by Nov. 12.
Guilford County Board of Elections Director Charlie Collicutt said they've received 1,500 absentee ballots between election night and Thursday.
Collicutt says 30,000 absentee ballots that were requested have not yet been returned, but a portion of those votes either voted in person on Election Day or early.
Collicutt said the board of elections is still working through that information.
Forsyth County Board of Elections Director Tim Tsujii said they've received about 1,050 absentee ballots over the last two days, 550 Thursday and a little more than 500 yesterday.
Tsujii said of the 60,000 mail-in ballots that were requested, he said 20,000 could still be out there.
Tsujii said it’s possible some of those 20,000 people chose not to mail in their ballot, and instead, vote in-person, but they don’t yet have that information.
In Rockingham County, Board of Elections Director Janet Odell said they had about 1,000 absentee ballots that they had not yet received back, but a lot of people called to say they were instead going to vote in-person.
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Odell said still, the post office has been delivering properly postmarked absentee ballots over the last few days, so she expects their results could change.
The races are still tight in North Carolina. President Donald Trump has a lead over former Vice President Joe Biden in North Carolina by 76,701 votes at the time of this article.
Senator Thom Tillis has a lead over Cal Cunningham by 96,707 votes. There are 116,200 outstanding absentee ballots in North Carolina, and the board of elections said it's not clear how many of those will return with a postmark by Election Day by Nov. 12.
Lou Ann Jessup is a Chief Judge at the Western Precinct in Rockingham County and is the site coordinator at the Wentworth location.
Jessup said her team is working diligently to sort through the absentee ballots in Rockingham County.
"Really be patient with us. There are no conspiracies going on. There’s nobody trying to do anything wrong here, at least in our county," said Jessup, "We try to do everything above board and as correct as we can so, to do that right takes time and takes effort and it takes people behind the scenes going through voter lists to make sure everything is done properly."
Jessup said there's a long process that has to take course when verifying and vetting the absentee votes.
"I know a lot of people think that all you have to do is mark something and it's done but we have to verify everything and make sure everything’s been counted," said Jessup, "We have to make sure the person that came in to vote has an authorization to vote form and you have to make sure the right number forms match up with the number of ballots that were cast at the precinct so it’s a lot of paperwork and a lot of follow up to make sure it's correct."