It's 519. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 WBT, the internet gremlins and technology gremlins trying to keep myself and Dr. Andy Jackson off the air on this Thursday morning as we continue our discussion on early voting, which does continue through Saturday here in North Carolina. Let's get back to that conversation with Dr. Andy Jackson.
Early voting for the 2026 primary election continues until 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon. We've been walking you through some of the numbers and totals over the last couple of weeks here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. We will continue that trend this morning. It's my pleasure once again to welcome Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation to the news hour this morning.
Andy, we chatted last week. We were kind of slow to the gate. Votes were still just trickling in across most of North Carolina. What have you learned here in the first half of this final week of early voting?
Well turnout is still up. Compared to this point in the last midterm primary in 2022. And we're starting to see the big question here: is this? More voting or earlier voting. And since every day so far has shown more voting than the equivalent day of four years ago, I think we're probably leaning more towards this representing more voting.
It could be we're also seeing some lingering acceptance of Of early voting, so that we'll end up with fewer votes in the primary. Primary voters as a whole tended to be a little more traditional-minded. We saw this kind of seesaw with more early voting in the general less in the primaries, but it seems like the primaries are also moving towards early voting.
So we're getting both. I think we're going to have more, relatively more early voting and higher turnout altogether this time around. Let me ask you about that turnout. We're just shy of 420,000 votes. I'll note for our audience that this data is early voting through Tuesday.
So, no early voting data on Wednesday yet. We'll get that updated a little bit later on this morning on the Carolina Election Tracker website. Just shy of 420,000 votes. What does that number mean to you thus far?
Well, it means that there is interest in North Carolina in this upcoming primary, especially on the Democratic side. I mean, both sides are up, but the Democrats are up a lot. Neither of the Senate primaries look that interesting from a competition standpoint, as far as we can tell. But voters are still coming out for these. I think probably because all the things going around with the Trump presidency has kind of peaked political interest more than you would expect.
And I think that is getting people more involved in the process. Andy, I have an interesting anecdote I want to throw at you and get your thoughts on. I spent some time out at early voting over the last week and a half or so, just kind of listening to what voters are saying, trying to kind of get a grip of what's going on. And I think inherently we assume that the primary electorate tends to be a little bit more informed as to what's going on. Turnout is so incredibly low in comparison to general elections like we'll have coming up later on this year.
Andy, I was pretty surprised that many individuals were walking up to both the Democrat and Republican tables and didn't really know exactly what the primary was. They say, yeah, I'm voting for all Republicans. You'd say, well, yeah, sure, but there's eight Republicans running in the U.S. Senate race here across North Carolina, so you've got to pick one.
Well, I think that may be indicative of what happens when you have a couple of factors. One, we are having higher turnout, so we are having more turnout from people who do not have experience. Voting in primaries. Their only experience is voting in the general election where they're going to have these candidates from different parties show up. And two, we have the rise of unaffiliated voters.
And so, who may not come in with a set attachment to one party or another. North Carolina is what we call a semi-closed primary state where you can vote for one party's primary ballot or the other party's primary ballot. They might be confused with other states that have what we call a true open primary where you can pretty much vote in any primary you want to. That's not the way it works here. You've got to pick one team and go with it in North Carolina up and down the ballot.
Help folks get more experience with the primary process. Hopefully, there'll be less confusion about this in the future. Andy, you mentioned that unaffiliated voter. That has been a, I don't know how many times you and I have talked about unaffiliated voters over the last two years, dozens of interviews. We've chatted around a variety of different factors.
I looked at the unaffiliated ballot. What are they grabbing? It looks like about 54% Democrat ballot.
So a slight edge towards the Democrats. I would have assumed that number would have been a little bit higher, but I guess when you kind of look across the entire state, unaffiliated's in more rural areas that tend to vote red, while unaffiliated and more urban areas tend to vote blue. Does that number jump off the page at you? No, not really. I think unaffiliated are a little more likely this time to vote in the Democratic primary than the Republican primary.
And I think that is reflective of the general trend within this electorate. We have more Democrats coming out this time relative to Republicans percentage-wise than we did in 2022. And unaffiliated voters, you know, one way or another, tend to behave like partisans, at least most of them. Most of them are not true independents that really split between one party and another in their votes. And so what you're getting is you're getting more Democrats.
And More unaffiliated who behave like Democrats coming out compared to Republicans and unaffiliated who behave like Republicans. And so I think this is what you would expect. I think we would see the exact reverse if we had a primary where more Republicans were coming out. In that same situation, I would expect more unaffiliated to be requesting Republican ballots. It's just kind of a soft partisanship within the unaffiliated ranks.
You mentioned this a couple of minutes ago, and I've got some anecdotal kind of evidence on this as well. You mentioned that neither of the Senate races, there is a primary for the Democrats as well, even though for those that are not in Democrat circles may not know that's the case. Roy Cooper, obviously, former governor running in that primary, expected to win that pretty handedly. But Andy, even in this Republican primary, I guess maybe I'm a little bit insulated and a little bit of an echo chamber in some Republican circles online. I would have assumed that that race would have drawn a lot more turnout.
But again, same thing, talking to individuals at the polls, there didn't seem to be really a lot of enthusiasm for that race. A lot of people just said, well, which one are you voting for? It was that kind of discussion with individuals. I'm a little surprised that it hasn't materialized more to this point.
Well, you know, a lot of times, and we saw this, for example, in the last Republican Senate primary where we had kind of the hard-right wing of the party was supporting primarily Ted Budd. The more moderate, traditional Republicans were supporting Pat McCrory. And you have this kind of divide traditionally, and it's in both parties between kind of the base and the leadership, if you will, or the traditional, more moderate wing of the party. And I think what happened is this time around with Donald Trump's endorsement of Michael Watley early. You know, Mike Watley, you can't get more established Republican than him, you know, having been in party leadership at the state and national level before.
And then Donald Trump, who really represents that kind of, you know, the whole MAGA base voter.
So you ended up with this kind of union of those two sides right off the bat once that endorsement came in. And I don't want to say that this is a done deal, but it's starting to look like it. There hasn't been this kind of energy in this race that you would expect to see if there was a real spirited challenge among the couple of more conservative Republicans, at least the people who represent themselves as being more conservative Republicans in this. It is starting to look like it's kind of a humdrum race. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought back 2022.
I know that even the John Locke Foundation hosted a debate with some of those candidates, which included Mark Walker, former Governor Pat McCorey, and now U.S. Senator Ted Brother. There was a lot more buzz and a lot more activity in that race at that time. All right, Andy, we're going to watch early voting over the next couple of days and looking at some of the numbers from 2022 and all the great charts and data available over at Carolinaelections.com. There seems to be a rocket takeoff in the graph as we head towards later on in the day today on Thursday, Friday, and then the final day of early voting on Saturday.
Do you suspect that we'll see something similar here over the next few days? Probably. I mean, this happens almost every election. There was only one real exception that comes to mind. That was the 2020 general election, where actually early voting started tapering off later on because people were trying to spread their votes out.
Usually, you know, interest rises the closer you get to Election Day or primary day in this case. And so that's going to get people's interest and they're going to come out.
So I'm expecting to see that kind of typical spike over these last three days of early voting. What does that mean for Election Day? I mean, we've talked about multiple times how in generally turnout is incredibly low in these primary elections, even though numbers are up a little bit from 2022. If you were mapping it out on a chart, you'd still say yes, low turnout. What does that mean as we look towards next Tuesday?
Well, that's the interesting question. We mentioned that a moment ago earlier on in this segment, is that we're not 100% sure if this is representing a bigger shift towards early voting or if this is really just higher turnout. And if it's the former, then primary day is going to have a dip compared to 2022. If not, then we're going to see a similar spike. I'm suspecting, my poor scump answer is I suspect it's a little of both.
I expect that on Election Day, we'll probably have a higher turnout, but it won't be as relatively increased as we have seen in early voting. Andy, tell us a little bit about Carolinaelections.com for folks that maybe want to look at a specific area of the state. They're representatives in either the North Carolina House or Senate. How can they go and do that?
Well, it's easy. If you go to Carolinaelections.com, then you're going to have two choices. One is the voter registration site and one is vote tracker. Click on vote tracker. And there's two ways you can do this.
You'll see a series of graphs. You'll see a map of the state of North Carolina. If you want to look at your home county and you can find out on map, you can click on that. We also have a filter. You can go and bring the filter down and fill in the box that you want.
If you want to look at turnout, for example, in North Carolina 106th district of House District, that's where Carla Cunningham is facing a primary challenge there in Mecklenburg County. You can click on that and see what the turnout there is for that. You can do that with everything. Say Senate 26, which is Phil Berger versus Sam Page. You can click on that and check out turnout there as well.
Any race that you're interested in just about, except for like local county commissioner districts, we don't have those unfortunately, but any kind of statewide race, any kind of countywide race, any. kind of state legislative race, you can just click your way and get all the details you want. Yeah, I encourage our audience to visit the website and take a look. There's a lot of very interesting data on there. Things you may not necessarily assume are the case with these ongoing primary elections.
We appreciate the update this morning. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Ah It's 5:38. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM, WBT.
I'm Nick Craig. A good Thursday morning to you. Upgrading technology tends to be a major feat for governments, whether we're talking about local, state, or even the federal government. There's a major overhaul that is beginning. It's very early stages here in the state of North Carolina.
It surrounds our election management system. To get some details on that from a meeting this week, Teresa Opaika, CarolinaJournal.com, joins us on the news hour. Teresa, as you and I have talked about in a litany of other different stories, we've got old, antiquated technology, 20, 30 years old, running very critical portions of the state of North Carolina. This morning we're talking about elections. What did you learn from this meeting earlier this week?
Sure, Nick. Thanks so much for having me this morning.
So, yeah, it was the inaugural meeting of the Modernization of Election Data Systems Commission, better known as MEDS, which is, I guess, a better acronym to talk about, shorten it a little bit. They met earlier this week. It's a bipartisan 22-member commission that was created to help bring North Carolina's election management system up to date. As we're looking at this, it's called the state's election information management system, or SEAMS, and also campaign finance reporting software. And they're both sorely overdated.
SEEMS was created and developed in 1998.
So we're talking well over time for that to get revamped. And the executive director of the state election board, Sam Hayes, told the commission. That although it was cutting edge back then, its technology is dated, increasingly difficult to maintain and update and secure. And the code for SEAMs is written in a dead language. It's going to cease to function within the next two years, which you know, also is prompting that need for modernization and replacement.
He got a $15 million appropriation from the General Assembly that he requested. That's going to cover phases one and two of the modernization plan. And also, talking about the campaign finance reporting software. That's also about 20 years out of date.
So yeah, both systems are in desperate need of an overhaul. Yeah, I will admit I have not had the opportunity, I'm not in the election system, to deal with the election information management system. But Teresa, I have played around with the state's campaign finance reporting software, and it is very blatantly obvious how old that software is and antiquated. Again, still working now, but as was noted in the meeting earlier this week, this is older software languages. The updates for that are non-existent at this point.
The individuals developing in that language are harder and harder to come by. And you create a situation where eventually you get to the end of the road and there's nothing else that you can do with this software.
So I guess better rather than never as it relates to getting some of these updates through. Correct, correct. And state auditor Dave Bullock, who is chairing that commission, he said it's going to take some time for that full upgrade. He expects, though, he asked the committee to get that overhaul and study different aspects of what they need to go over. They expect that overhaul to be completed by next summer, 2027, not this coming summer, but next year.
We also heard from State Board of Elections Campaign Finance Director Lindsay Wakely. She said that under state law, certain committees, they're required to file all of their disclosure reports electronically, but it's that software is making it really hard because it relies heavily on a downloadable stand alone application Rather than a web-based portal, but the problem with that is it runs only on Windows.
So, it doesn't work on any Apple device, any, you know, or even a Google Chromebook, and that's very popular now, too. You have to go out and buy a Windows computer. And I think they've lost some favorability over the years.
So, that adds another burden.
So, after downloading an application, entering transactions, completing all of that. Then they have to create a report, email that disclosure report to the state election board, along with a sign certification document. But you know, those must be signed. The system was not designed for that, to have disclosure reports with signatures.
So they have to get a workaround right now. That creates more work. Like she said, all in all, it takes up to a day for the report to appear online and be made available to the public.
So this is why they're stressing all this. There's just so many extra steps that You know, if they got this all updated and modernized, it would be less of a headache for all those involved in getting these reports out.
Well, and let's be honest about who's doing these reports, Teresa. Any political candidate in North Carolina, we're talking about statewide candidates. We're talking school board, city council, county commission. There are thousands of those positions, tens of thousands of those positions across the state of North Carolina. All of them have to file with the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
They've got to open this campaign committee. And in on-year election cycles, there's four reports a year, off-cycle elections, two reports a year. Many of those campaigns and many of those committees have determined that they just continue to use the paper version of those reports because of some of those concerns that you're bringing up with the software. And there was some discussion during the meeting about moving this completely online, a cloud-based system, so that seemingly you could do this from any device, including even a smartphone or tablet. Right, right.
That suggestion was made and that would eliminate the need also for some third-party vendors and also making that system go online. That would be really good too, because we did have a recommendation because sometimes the treasurer and the different committees or candidates, whoever it would be, all those people you mentioned, they don't have the money to buy a specific computer for the committee. And the committee's data is actually sometimes on a personal computer of somebody in a home. And when people maybe transition, maybe there's a divorce or something's going on with it, what have you, sometimes the data can just disappear.
So that's very concerning. That's in somebody's house, on somebody's personal computer, because they have no other choice.
So it is a very good suggestion that was definitely made. Teresa, one of the frequent guests here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, our friend Dr. Andy Jackson of the John Locke Foundation. He is one of the 22 members on this bipartisan commission. He spoke during the meeting and after the meeting with you.
What did he have to say about this first inaugural meeting? Sure.
So he made the suggestion during the meeting. He says, right now, if I want to know what kind of outside spending there is, like basically candidate spending as you're talking about it, done on He called it candidate Y. He said, I can, that's what he hopes to know. And I should say, stress this is what his goal is for this whole system. If he wants to know the outside spending on candidate Y, he would like to just access with a few clicks.
But right now, it takes a lot of digging to get all those independent expenditures up and out. And then have a reasonable expectation of seeing how much is being spent on a candidate's behalf.
So he said if they had a system that can get that relatively quickly, he thinks the same system would solve a lot of other problems down the line.
So basically, it would cut out a lot of extra unneeded steps. Yeah, no question about that. And, you know, Teresa, we talk about transparency a lot. We talk about getting access to information. All of these candidates and campaigns and committees, as I mentioned, have to file these reports with the state board of elections.
But unless you're somebody that is really in tune on this stuff, it is very hard to dig through some of those reports and pull out some of the numbers and data that might be relevant. If you're trying to research a candidate, Teresa, and say, hey, where is this individual getting their funding from? That is a very hard task for an everyday person in North Carolina to do that is not very politically in touch and in tune. Yeah. Exactly, exactly.
As we heard from Dr. Jackson about that. And we even heard from the State Board of Elections Secretary Stacey Forer Eggers IV, also a member. He said, a lot of this has kept him up at night for the last several years. He was just worrying about it.
He says it was exciting to see that. You know, it's finally happening because there were a myriad of reasons given as to why this could not be done.
So he was so glad to see the group come together with energy and focus. And it's a terrific opportunity, he said, to get this right so that the next 20 years, everything will be, you know, hopefully going a lot smoother and they can come back and revisit that system. But he says he is excited to see this. All come together, and he appreciates, as you say, the increased transparency and increased efficiency, which, coming from a state board of election member, I guess that is really satisfying to see. No question about that.
And then, of course, Teresa, from the campaign or the, excuse me, the election side of everything, if you talk to individuals that work at the local county board of elections, just kind of a quick synopsis here for those that are maybe new to our program. Yes, there is a state board of elections, but all 100 counties in North Carolina are the ones that are responsible for administering elections. Early voting is ongoing right now. Election Day coming up next Tuesday. Teresa, many of them have got a lot of complaints with this state election management system.
And I would imagine they are also will probably be pretty happy with some of these major upgrades that will be taking place. Yeah, you are correct. I mean, they're doing a lot of the hard work on the front end early on and then passing everything on down to the state election board.
So, yeah, they most definitely will be very happy when this all gets sorted out and straightened out and up to date because they have a lot to deal with. Like you say, it's not just the state election board. You've got 100 counties with all these people trying to get all this data in and making sure things run smoothly. And, you know, so yeah, it'll be a big benefit for those as well.
Now, Teresa, you mentioned a pretty quick turnaround time, looking to have at least some phases of this software, this new software, new systems implemented by the summer of next year, 2027. That is a pretty quick turnaround time, pretty much as it relates to government with almost anything. Is this group set to meet pretty regularly? I believe so. I believe they are going to be meeting every month.
I believe it's supposed to be the third Wednesday of the month.
So the next meeting is scheduled for march eighteenth. I guess that would make sense if they want to get the ball rolling on this for next year. They got to keep meeting pretty frequently to make that happen. And of course, Teresa will keep an eye on those details coming into that meeting in mid-March. You can read some additional coverage this morning by visiting our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
We appreciate the update. Teresa Opeka joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. If you're an HVAC technician and a call comes in, Granger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product, fast and hassle-free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Granger's easy-to-use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along.
Call 1-800-GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. Good morning again. It's 5:54. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 WBT.
We've got some continued concerning information over at CarolinaJournal.com as it relates to job development investment grants, JDIGs. We've had plenty of coverage of this here on the NewsHour and over on our website. We are learning this morning that six more JDIG projects were canceled by the North Carolina Department of Commerce's Economic Investment Committee. That happened late in the day on Tuesday, according to new documentation that was provided from the Department of Commerce to Carolina Journal. According to Joseph Harris, who is a fiscal policy analyst over at the John Locke Foundation, he said six more terminated incentive deals adds to a troubling long-term pattern.
Noting that during the fiscal years of 2003, not 2023, but 2003 to 2025, almost half of all JDIG agreements ultimately failed to meet their job creation targets. The program currently has a 49.4% failure rate. And according to Joseph Harris, that should not be considered a dependable economic development strategy. With him saying, rather than relying on selective incentives that frequently fall short, Lawmakers should focus on broad-based tax and regulatory reforms that benefit all businesses. These officials noted that the terminated state incentives were for the following six companies, and we've got.
All the details on our website. A couple of different companies there. One is known as Carcogen Therapeutics, Adam Power, Techni Mark, Relias Learning is one of the other companies' advanced medical partners, and many others that have fallen victim to the JDIG program. We'll take one, for example, Carcogen Therapeutics. In 2021, plans were announced to create some 200 jobs in the Durham area and invest $157 million.
The expansion would have been the Chinese company's first biomanufacturing site in North America, with the project expected to boost the state's economy by a whopping $1 billion over a 12-year grant period.
However, the company failed to meet its hiring targets under the agreement and was also unable to file its 2024 grantee annual report as they are required to the state. Fortunately, the company received no payments for the state. Under this agreement, and that was the case and does remain the case with the J. Dig grant.
However, the concern remains. These major announcements come out. We're talking about potentially billions of dollars worth of investments, hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs being talked about. And unfortunately, nearly half of those projects failed to come to fruition. No money is expended, but none of the jobs and none of the economic investment is making its way to North Carolina either.
Again, those details over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, with the headline: NC Commerce cancels six J Dig projects.
Well, that's going to do it for a Thursday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT.
