Tuesday than on opening day. While thats resulted in long waits and parking lot jams at in location many locations. At lake Lynn Community center, Marshall Thorp says the lines really havent let up. Been here three times to vote and the line was really long, i said im going to go home and not stand in line today. I think voting is important. We need to do it. Reporter so far in wake county, africanamerican voters are turning out for early voting at a high rate. They make up one out of five registered voters in but one out of four early voters so far. Women voters have an even bigger edge. They outnumber men in wake county by about 15 . But their turnout in early voting so far is double that margin. Kathy almond had heard the lines were long but that didnt discourage her. What i want is a magic button that turns off the at as soon as i vote. Reporter not turning out as Appalachian State in boone the cast her vote here where shes registered but many friends probably wont bother. I dont think they understand that its going to be a continuation of the next four years of our life you know. That was laura please lee reporting leslie reporting, another change this year, lawmakers did away with Straight Party ticket voting. So it may be taking some voters a little longer to fill out their ballots. The final is saturday, november 5th. One week from the time this program is airing. Flush flush joining us now is kim strach who is the executive director of the state board of elections. Thats right. Okay i want to make sure i had the proper title there. And bob phillips with common cause. Also here is our multimedia Investigative Reporter mark binker. Kim, 1. 2 million as of friday morning, when we were taping this program, have taken advantage of early voting. Or absentee by mail. So weve got 6. 8 million registered voters . We do. 1. 2 million have voted. Is that approaching a record . It is. Actually we are weve had more people vote at the same time this year than they did in 2012 at this same point in time. So were encouraged by that. That at least were thinking were on the road to at least the turnout of 2012 if not higher. And are significant problems at polling sites . I dont think so. I dont think we are. I mean so far weve had very few complaints at polling sites and were just going to do everything we can to keep it that way. Youre always people are very emotional and excited about candidates and when people get around polling sites, you do have concerns sometimes. But we really believe that our chief judges and our Election Officials have been trained to deal with that. And weve so far so good. And bob, since the last have been changes to early voting laws. And voting laws in North Carolina. Have those do you believe with the voting turnout we are seeing so far, that any of these changes may have limited or impacted in a negative way the numbers of people coming out . Well, we wont really know i guess i think that at least the turnout is very good. But i think some of the long lines, we didnt have as many early voting sites open the first week of early voting that we had in to 400 statewide. Some of these things we really wont know until after the election. Well, i mean here in wake county, where were taping this, you know, there were nine early voting sites that was fewer than four years ago but still a goodly number. Still saw the crowded places. What about guilford and forsyth counties . Big urban counties that for the first week had one voting site apiece available to those voters. Just more people available than you could fit through that funnel. I would agree. Guilford being the Third Largest county. 350,000 voters having only one site at the downtown office. I dont think was serving that county well. Forsyth county is similar situation. Thats a decision though the local board of elections made. I dont know kim, maybe they were appealed i think the Forsyth County perhaps was or maybe not. Actually both guilford and voted for those plans. There may have been compromises but all three Board Members voted for the plans at the end of the day and youre right. A lot of counties, because of the decision to go to 17 days, came late. Came the end of july. County boards of elections had already made their plans for a ten day early voting period. And so some counties were limited at their ability to get locations for the first week. The good news i think in and the extended hours from 2012. So hopefully theyll make up in these last ten days. Thats one of the questions we get from viewers. Why is the schedule different for the first week and second week . Why does you know wake county is doing this, why isnt it available here . In each county makes up its own mind yeah . Thats important for people to understand. Each county board of elections, three member county board of elections, they make the schedule. Because the laws changed, with can do within that 17 days they can have whatever schedule at the site that they want. Prior to that, in the primary for example, when we had ten days, county boards could still make decisions on where sites were. But they had to match the number of hours from the primary in 2012. And so that made some of its decisions for them. Theres no longer that matching hours requirement. So thats why you see schedules entire early voting period. I mentioned the laws change and you mentioned the courts are involved in this. It seems like theres this giant chess board out there thats called elections in North Carolina. Does that make your job i mean i have to think it makes much harder. Its always shifting. Well i mean its challenging because we have make sure that 100 county boards of elections implement whatever changes are called for either from the Court Requires us to do. And so its challenging when things the rules change and the middle of the game. But we sort of were accustomed to that over the past couple of years. And bob as you monitor this, you would like the see some of those to see some of the pieces on that chess board changed and moved. Or changed back. Well, we were happy that the court overturned what was you know, in our mind, a Voter Suppression bill passed in states in the early 2000s to one of the best. And we think that some of these laws like early voting you know helped contribute to that. I think the big thing winning back was same day voter registration. I think its very important because that has allowed people who have problems to correct them on the spot during the early voting period. And i think thats one of the more important pieces that we won back. And before we go to break, when you say people who have problems theyre able to correct them. What type of problems are we talkinou i know some folks this is an election where you have frequent voters or infrequent voters who come back and have not voted maybe in the last ele removed from the rolls. But they still think theyre registered. If theres any kind of problem like that, they can correct it there. And thats what i have been hearing might be you know some of the issues that might be were seeing right now. Bottom line if you have any doubt about your voter status, go vote early where it can be sorted out more easily than on election day. Thats great advice. Take a break, weapon we come back when we come back well talk about the issues surrounding voter id. What you need and what you dont have to have at the polls the year and definitely this year and definitely what the rules are regarding your phone in the polling place. Welcome back, we are on the record tonight talking about early voting as the election so close now we can finally say the words. With me from the state board of also from common cause bob phillips and mark binker is here. Before the break we say we were talking about some of the rules but lets first talk about this issue thats happening at some counties in our viewing areas. Regarding the Voting Machines. Mark . One of the things that we get tons of calls about is i was at a Voting Center and we had these touch screen Voting Machines and i voted for one candidate and it looks like the machine tried to register my vote for another candidate. This is a call we get every two years about these things. What right. Touch screen voting equipment has to be what we call calibrated. A lot of times its not a calibration issue, sometimes its that the voter is not touching on the correct part of where the candidates name is. We were so accustomed now with our phones to being able to touch any part of the screen and that will prompt you to youve hit the right thing. On these, this is older equipment. So theres actually a box beside each candidates name. Name, it might actually register it the another candidate. So what weve tried to do, because we understand those concerns and we have them every year i think. That we vote, is we try to put more signage up. And we encourage county boards of elections to have a stylus or actually pencils with unsharpened pencils with an eraser so the voter can actually touch the block. If a voter gets to the end of the ballot through th they dont like, they think hey this is different. What should they do . Absolutely. And thats the good thing about these touch screens. Is that before you cast your ballot, it gives you a summary of every candidate that it believes that you have cast a ballot for. A vote for. And so if you see anything on that that doesnt reflect what you actually voted you should go back. It will give you an opportunity to go back and correct that. So thats the other thing. We were encouraging people check that summary. Dont hit cast your vote until who you voted wanted if vote for. And a couple of things on this. The type of equipment used is determined by local boards of election. Thats right. Now its important though the state board of elections has certified equipment. And so counties can only choose from the equipment thats been certified. But they do some counties use touch screens and some use paper ballots that goes through an optical scanner. Those are the two types of equipment North Carolina uses. Here in wake county im going to be filling in you are on paper. If i properly, or completely, or i do too much there is it going to register . It will. If the machine detects a problem it will stick it to another bin and it can be hand counted. Okay. And then this question. And ive gotten this so many times. Particularly with this year of president ial candidates. People have said i want to write in a name. Is there a provision on a ballot to write in a name . It depends. You can write in, theres always the ability to write in a candidates name. But not all of them will count. Because writeins generally, there are some local races where its not you dont have to be qualified and have enough signatures, but if you are going to write in someone for president , that person would have to be a qualified writein. In fact in this jill stein is a qualified writein. So you could write her name in. And if you write her name in, it will count. Crabtree, or or mark binker. Right. They will not count. And does that disqualify the entire ballot . Or just the president ial race wherever does it like if i were to write in a name of someone who was not qualified. Such as mark binker although i think he is qualified. Would it disqualify my entire voting ballot . Or just that race . Absolutely it would have no impact on any other race that you vote for. Have cast if it was unqualified person, you would just not have cast a ballot for anybody for president that would be qualified. But on the ballot, theres a line where you can write a name in. Sure. Okay all right. We get a lot of questions about that. Sorry. [ laughter ] i still may write your name in. Im busy forming my campaign committee. Phones are so ubiquitous now. And we see them wind up in polling places. I know lots of groups have apps where you can go through and kind of select oh who i want to for vote for. You can bring the phones into the polling places with you. Again first time definitively. But we have something ncvoterguide. Org which is a nonpartisan voter guide. Punch in the address and you can get the ballot and take this into the voting booth now. We should mention wral has the my ballot tool online and you can use that. Theres lots of others out there. The one thing you cant do with that phone . You cant take a picture of your ballot. Okay. Correct. That is against the law. And a lot of times people, we see people do it and they dont understand that. Were in an age a lot of people selfies happen everywhere. Certainly people voting wanted the that. Thats something that we have encouraged and instructed counties to have signage up just to remind people that yes you can have the phone but you cant take airpackture. If you were to take a picture, and a poll watcher or an official sees that, what happen well, your ballot is still going to count. Your ballot can are you going to be charged with breaking a law . Well, if you knowingly did that, you potentially could. We investigate all kinds of complaints and every election we investigate complaints of people taking pictures of the ballot. Okay speaking of pictures, no photo id is needed if you are already registered. That is correct. If you come for one stop identification. Same day register, it doesnt have to be a photo id. It can be it needs to be a government document. What we call hava id that has your name and current residential address. Like your utility bill . Utility bill will work. Or a Bank Statement would work . Yes. Yes. One of the questions ive been getting is whether since were so close to halloween we will see little zombienc the poll and the dead voting. How many [ laughter ] i feel like im in chicago. Well i mean, do we see other than the folks who vote early and then have the discourtesy to die before election day in North Carolina, do we see evidence of people who are deceased are somehow voting in our elections . I dont know of any. I mean, certainly you know, there have been stories in the past of some of those mountain counties where some of that has nonissue. It doesnt exist in any kind of wide systematic scale that included. Agree kim . Im not going to say theres widespread voter fraud. Its one of the things that we as the agency try to make sure that were addressing in case there is. And until you know, you look into all of these things its hard to say whether there is or there isnt. But i will say that any allegation we will look into. So that we can show if in fact there isnt voter fraud, or exists. Not the get too far in the weeds. You do look i think at least every year matching up voter rolls with hhs records to kind of weed those out. Do you not . We do and there are often you know a lot of people that are deceased that havent come off the rolls. And thats something that we do. We also match with other states to make sure to see if theres double registrations. Just to keep the voter rolls of elections, thanks for taking the time out of a very busy day to talk about this. Bob phillips, thanks for taking time out of the day as well to keep pushing this idea of early voting. And for everyone to exercise this incredible right we have in this country. To vote. What democracy is. Good luck. When we come back, well talk about a specific issue on public transit. The group moving wake county forward posted this on its website of course, if theyre able to do that, it comes with a price tag. Were going to talk about that is it justified . And why we either do or do not need this bond. With us right now is mike charbonneau, he is now with the director of Communications Director for go triangle. Formally known as formerly known as triangle transit. Mike thanks for coming in. Wake county gop immediately need this. Its going to raise taxes. Its not worth the cost. To that what do you say . You mentioned the growth right off the top and the wake county numbers, 64 people a day. Thats an extra 450 people moving to wake county alone every week. Were at a Million People and expected to double by 2045. Public transportation is so important for many reasons. It gives people a choice. The choice to come out from behind the wheel to not have to drive in stressful commute or save some money. But for other people this is the only way to get around. This is the vital connection to jobs to education and health care and other opportunities and when Companies Look at where they want to locate, all that factors in. This is also about job creak and connectivity and opportunity. Also with us is the major of knightdale. We appreciate you coming in to talk with us. One of four chairs of this wake without a bypass that had been built years ago, you would have had more congestion maybe than you would know what to do with. Explain why those who are against this bond are wrong. Well, basically with the growth that has taken place in the eastern portion of wake county, tremendous growth, five years ago knightdale was one of the Fastest Growing municipalities in the state of rt so with that grth of course, you have your growing pains. And traffic happens to be one of those growing pains. We have folks in our community that are retiring. Retirees that do not wish to drive anymore. And theyre looking for other means of transportation. So this will give them options. We have those that have the desire to go back to school. And they dont have adequate transportation. Option. And so you know, just for folks to be able to get around as we continue to grow in the eastern portion of wake county. I was speaking with mike earlier in regards to the traffic impact that weve had although we have access to 540. The 64 bypass, knightdale boulevard. We have folks not just from seven lone and none zebulon and knightdale area but wilson, virginia and you know with that type of growth thats taken place in the knightdale community. This is very much needed. You know, one of the criticisms ive heard of this plan is that it seems designed to funnel people from outside of the Big City Centers into the internal and if youre going from one rural area of wake county to another rural area, you might end up having to kind of come all the way in and then go all the way back out again. Guess spokes on the hub approach makes sense in your mind. You know, for us and i kind of disagree with that. Because well, for us, we have a lot of folks in the eastern portion of wake county, they work in downtown raleigh. They work out in rtp. And in terms of the congesti