Orange County residents turned out in record number to early vote in the municipal election ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
The county Board of Elections reports that 4,428 votes were cast during the early voting period from October 19 through November 4.
It took a strong finish to break the previous odd-year early voting record and the two highest vote totals came on the last two days of early voting. The vote total surpassed the 4,243 votes cast during early voting in 2011.
Races on the ballot in Orange County include town governing boards in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough, in addition to the race for seats on the Chapel Hill – Carrboro City Schools Board of Education.
This is also the first year in more than a decade that there have been contested races for mayor of each municipality in the county.
Carrboro Town Hall and the Seymour Center in Chapel Hill remained the two most popular early voting locations of the four opened for municipal elections. The other two sites were the Board of Elections office in Hillsborough and Chapel of the Cross adjacent to the UNC campus.
While the 2017 early voting turnout represents a record for a municipal election, it is still far short of the nearly 60,000 votes that were cast during early voting leading up to the presidential election last November.
Precincts are open on Election Day from 6:30 Tuesday morning until 7:30 p.m. More information on voting on Election Day can be found here.
WCHL will have live coverage of the election results beginning at seven o’clock Tuesday night.
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