by WorldTribune Staff, September 6, 2020

North Carolina election officials said the first wave of mail-in ballot requests largely came from Democrat and independent voters.

North Carolina on Friday became the first state to send out ballots for the 2020 presidential election. The state has already received 16 times the number of mail-in ballot requests as it did in 2016.

In North Carolina, Republicans have historically dominated mail-in voting. But for the 2020 cycle, officials said, more than 326,000 ballots were requested by Democratic voters, and 192,000 were requested by independents. Only 92,000 requests came from Republicans.

Voters in North Carolina can continue to request the ballots by mail up until Oct. 27, but officials have warned that may be too close to the Nov. 3 election for officials to receive the ballot and return it to their local elections office in time.

“The numbers in North Carolina and elsewhere suggest Republicans are listening to President Trump and his warnings about certain kinds of mail-in voting, shying away from mail ballots while Democrats rush to use them,” Brooke Singman wrote for FoxNews.com on Friday.

“The Democrats’ advantage in mail voting won’t necessarily translate into an advantage in the election, however. Ballots cast on Election Day are expected to be mostly Republican,” Singman noted.

A recent USA Today/Suffolk poll found that 56 percent of Republicans said they would vote in person on Election Day, compared with just 26% among Democrats. The poll indicates that Democrats are more than twice as likely than Republicans to vote by absentee ballot or mail.

The Republican National Committee and Trump campaign’s “Protect the Vote” effort have warned for months that “Democrats are trying to use coronavirus and the courts to legalize ballot harvesting, implement a nationwide mail-in ballot system, and eliminate nearly every safeguard in our elections.”

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