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So, minutes. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. It's 505 and welcome in to a Wednesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you.
Well, some nasty storms rolled through the state of North Carolina during your Tuesday and into your Tuesday evening. Currently, about 35,000 people in the state of North Carolina without power. Most of those outages in western North Carolina were heavy rains and gusty winds, even a couple of tornado warnings rolled through the state. We'll be keeping an eye on that throughout the day over at CarolinaJournal.com. In some statewide news this morning, a new rapid response report from the North Carolina Office of the State Auditor is raising questions about how more than $111 million.
Was spent to operate 55 Hurricane Helene base camps and comfort stations, finding that the state paid fixed contract rates for services such as meals, showers, laundry, and beds without tracking how many of those services were actually used. The report released Tuesday by State Auditor Dave Bollock looks at contracts between North Carolina Emergency Management, that's NCEM, and Texas-based disaster response contractor SLSCO LTD, also known as SLS. The facilities supported first responders, utility crews, state employees, and disaster survivors across western North Carolina following Hurricane Helene. State Auditor Dave Bollock said that the report is not intended to question the need for emergency response, but instead highlights the importance of evaluating costs once the immediate crisis has passed. State auditor said in a press release: These base camps were an essential service in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Now that we are in the long-term rebuilding phase of recovery and knowing that future emergencies will strike, it is essential that we as a state have discussions on associated costs. $111 million is no small total, and the absence of key metrics raises a clear need to assess how these camps are utilized and consider them a full return on the expense. According to the audit, the North Carolina Emergency Management paid a total of $111,067,464 over roughly seven months, averaging more than $516,000 per day to SLS, the largest individual site located in Suannanoa, one of the hardest-hit areas in western North Carolina. Accounted for more than $27 million in expenses. Auditors found that many of those costs were based on the anticipated number of people at each location that they were expected to serve rather than actual usage.
For example, $52 million spent on base camps and comfort stations, more than $16.2 million spent on hand washing and shower stations, more than $6.8 million spent on tents, $6.5 million on meals and meal support. A lot of very high costs there. Meals, for example, were billed at a flat rate based on the facility serving either 155 meals, 250 meals, or 750 meals. That price translated to an effective cost of more than $41 per meal, regardless of how many meals were actually served or eaten. The report states that neither SLS nor North Carolina Emergency Management tracked actual meal consumption, and because of that, invoices were not adjusted based on the number of actual meals that were provided.
It was those flat rates. The audit found a similar lack of tracking for other services launched. Charges were based on anticipated demand rather than the number of loads actually completed. While things like shower usage, restroom usage, and hand washing activity were also not measured because those metrics were not required under the state's disaster contract.
Some of these facilities are very expensive. For example, an eight-stall restroom trailer cost the North Carolina emergency management $41,400 per week when it was all said and done. More than three-quarters of a million dollars spent on one single eight-stall restroom trailer at $41,000 per week. A 10-stall restroom facility, $124,000 per week, more than $248,000 when it was all said and done for the state of North Carolina. Almost half a million dollars in port-a-potties being spent by the state as well.
All of those activities as it related to. Washrooms or bathrooms cost the state nearly $3 million. Labor costs were also another major expense. According to the report, general staff were billed at $87.30 per hour, pod managers making a whopping $145.5 per hour, and site coordinators, listen to this, making $12,100 per week. Over time, increased those hourly rates for general staff to $130, more than $130 an hour, with general staff making more than $218 an hour for pod managers.
The report also notes that North Carolina Emergency Management did not have formal job descriptions for those positions, leaving qualifications to the contractor in SLS. North Carolina Emergency Management responded to the report, defending the spending, emphasizing the unprecedented scale of the response. as it related to Hurricane Helene. The agency said thousands of first responders from North Carolina and 39 other states, along with National Guard personnel, military members, and utility crews, required housing, food, and logistical support while conducting rescue, recovery, and infrastructure operations. North Carolina Emergency Management argued that disaster contracts are inherently expensive because they prioritize life safety and rapid deployment during catastrophic events.
Emergency management also noted that every invoice reviewed in the audit, and the audit is a very lengthy, more than a thousand pages, had already been examined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That's FEMA, as part of its public assistance program. According to the agency, FEMA determined the costs were necessary and eligible for 100% federal reimbursement. According to the Department of Public Safety Secretary and Jeff Smythe, He said in response to this audit in the audit that as the agency responded to the report, while capturing the specific number of meals, showers, or beds used may be helpful in day-to-day commodity procurement, disaster procurement is based on supporting the needs of local communities and partners and of emergency responders in a time of significant stress and when life safety is the priority. North Carolina Emergency Management is dedicated and focused on ensuring the right resources are available when needed to respond to catastrophic incidents and to support the North Carolinians we all serve.
When it was all said and done, more than $111 million worth of expenses from North Carolina Emergency Management to operate 55 Hurricane Helene based camps, most of those obviously in western North Carolina. We've got a full copy to this more than 1,000 page. Report released this week from state auditor Dave Bollick in his office. Those details over on our website this morning. CarolinaJournal.com.
Look for the story with the headline, Audit. NC paid $111 million for Helene Base Camps without tracking key services. This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. Reese, our content agent, wrote the copy based on our best practices, like mentioning Monday.com three times. That was the second.
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So, minutes. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. It's 5.18. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. We have been keeping very close tabs on charges against former FBI director James Comey.
This stems from a social media post he made back in 2025, an indictment in the Eastern District of North Carolina. We've been bringing you up to date on the latest on that over the last couple of months over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, and right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
However, it appears this morning that the former FBI director wants some of these charges dismissed. To walk us through the latest, Mitch Coke from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, million-dollar question for you. Will the former FBI director and James Comey ever step foot in the state of North Carolina after this indictment and these charges rolled out back a couple of months ago?
Well, I guess the question should be, will he set foot in North Carolina again? Because apparently the social media post that generated the charges happened because he was in North Carolina on a beach. Remember, this case stems from the fact that James Comey posted on Instagram a photo of seashells on a beach that were arranged to spell out 8647, meaning something along the lines of get rid of the 47th president, Donald Trump.
So he's been in North Carolina before, apparently, based on the charges. But you do have a good question about whether he'll be back to North Carolina again, other than for pleasurable purposes. And that remains to be seen because he is scheduled for arraignment on this federal charge of threatening the president on September 30th in New Bern with a trial to follow in October. But that might not ever happen because the former FBI director is filing. Motions to dismiss the case against him.
And what we saw in the first court filing was the claim that what was posted on social media was not a true threat. Those are the exact words used. That it has to be a true threat for there to be the charge of threatening the president with some sort of physical harm or threatening to kill him. And that basically what the argument from Comey's legal team is, is no, this is just political speech. One of the things that's in the court filing is 8647 is something you could find on merchandise and other things all across the country for people who don't like President Trump.
Comey's lawyers admit. He doesn't like President Trump. He's not a fan. He was exercising political speech by posting this social media item. But they're saying that that is not the same as an actual threat on the life of President Trump.
And so for that reason, the case should be thrown out. He's also in earlier court filings signaled that he's talking about selective prosecution and vindictive prosecution. And so it's likely that we see other arguments of that sort as well. James Comey will try to find any reason he could possibly put forward to have the case dismissed so he won't have to come to North Carolina, take part in an arraignment and possibly even a trial on these charges. Yeah, and obviously this got some pretty big national attention when it was first announced, even prior to these charges.
James Comey and his relationship with the current president of the United States and Donald Trump has been rocky at best, Mitch.
So there's been a lot of back and forth between those two over the last couple of years. Interesting argument there from the former FBI director about selective prosecution and selective targeting. I think many that are supporters of President Donald Trump would maybe call him and question him on that and say, that's a pretty interesting challenge made from a guy that they would probably feel use his position as the head of the FBI to do some of the same things he's now claiming he is dealing with as now a private citizen, no longer the head of the FBI. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yes, the childhood taunt version of that is takes one to know one. Sure.
That is certainly one of the charges that have been made about the Biden administration and about the FBI's activities against. Trump and Trump supporters. And so, yes, I think some people will look at this and say that's very rich.
Now, setting that aside, what happened in the past, you do have to look at the actual charge against James Comey and say, is it something that constitutes a true threat? That's something really for a judge or potentially even a jury to decide, depending on how far this case gets. The social media post, I think no one is denying that James Comey posted the message on Instagram. No one is denying that it's a message that had seashells spelled out to say 8647. The debate is whether that in and of itself is something that constitutes a true threat against the safety or life of the president as he's charged in this indictment.
A grand jury in North Carolina's Eastern District said, yes, that was enough for the charge and for the indictment. But it remains to be seen whether a judge will go along with this. Judge Louise Flanagan is the one who's overseeing this case, and she will deal with these motions likely before the arraignment that is scheduled at the end of September.
So as going back to your initial question, will he come back to North Carolina? Maybe, maybe not. Even if he gets the case dismissed, maybe he'll think twice about coming back to North Carolina if he plans to engage in any political speech of any sort. Yeah, we'll, of course, keep an eye on that late September court date and any of the time between now and then to see what happens with this request to dismiss some of these charges. But, Mitch, we have seen other cases here in North Carolina pretty recently as it relates to communicating threats.
And this has all become very interesting over the last 20 years with the rise of social media. Prior to that, to communicate a threat, you would probably have to say it on a phone call, post it on a billboard, say it to somebody else in a more intimate, one-on-one situation. Over the last 20 or 25 years with the rise of the internet and then, of course, social media that follows, we have seen individuals, not exactly at this level, but we have seen other cases where individuals have made these verbal threats on social media, posting them on their Facebook, Instagram, X accounts, whatever platform it might be that have gone through similar things. It's an interesting thing for the court to deal with when you're talking about a post being made on social media. And does that immediately?
Immediately translate into a threat of somebody's life. It's an interesting legal question. It is, and one that's probably still in the early stages of being fleshed out. You referenced that there are some other cases. One of the things that James Comey has been talking about is selective prosecution.
But we have seen a couple of other cases in North Carolina's Eastern District where there have been charges filed, even indictments against people who have threatened the president on social media. And not to be cynical about it, I don't think that the U.S. Attorney is filing these charges only so James Comey will lose on the selective prosecution issue, but it is a way to fight back against that claim that it's selective prosecution. If every case of someone on social media threatening the president is going to lead to this type of charge, that would be a way to strike back against Comey's argument that there is selective prosecution. But another point that's worth mentioning is in another one of these cases, which involved a man in Raleigh, we learned via the court process that there's actually an agency of the federal government that responds to these social media threats and looks into them.
And so it is something that's different than what you would have seen 20 or 30 years ago when if there was a threat against the president. It would have had to have been made in such a way that someone who didn't like hearing that threat. Approached authorities and said, Hey, this person told me this or said something on a phone call, or you see something in a flyer and it gets into the authorities' hands.
Now, in the era of social media, it's pretty easy. If someone posts something on social media and leaves it up there, it's going to find its way to someone who will then forward it to authorities if they don't like that message. And while we talk about this only being a relatively new thing in the grand scheme of, you know, 250 years here of America back just a couple of weeks ago, we have seen this going probably back starting in the Obama administration when you started seeing social media become a more common thing. Mitch, there were these indictments that, of course, went from Obama to the first Trump administration, Biden, now Trump again.
So there have been plenty of these indictments that have been handed out. This does not seem to be a one-sided party issue. Individuals get really passionate about this stuff and seemingly sometimes post incredibly stupid things on social media, like, of course, threatening the life of the president of the United States. And we have seen actions taken against them in the past. That's what makes this kind of interesting.
Yes, and some of the other cases that we've seen recently in North Carolina had more clear-cut. Cases of someone saying, I'm going to kill the president or I'm going to mess with the president.
So it's a lot clearer than looking at seashells that are arranged to say 86, 47, and then jumping from that and saying, Is that a threat to the president? I think that there is at least some. Argument that it could be seen as a threat to the president, but it's not as clear-cut as someone going on social media and saying, I'm going to kill the president, or I'm going to hurt the president. That's fairly clear-cut. James Comeys is not.
And one of the arguments in his court filing is that this is core political speech. And if you actually charge someone with a crime for something like this, you're going to chill. Rights that are protected by the First Amendment. I don't know how much they would chill them, but it's certainly an argument that could be made. And it's an argument I'm sure that Judge Louise Flanagan will be looking at as she's weighing the likelihood that this is a case that should go forward.
It's fascinating. The process has been fascinating up to this point. We will continue to track the details over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. We appreciate the update this morning. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timelines, while our human creative director made sure it all made sense. Easy! Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. It's 5:37.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good Wednesday morning to you. As we have been keeping an eye on the legislative short session here towards the end of July and early August, one of the things that we've been keeping you up to date on here on the Carolina Journal News Hour and over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, was the possibility of some changes to elections moving forward in the state of North Carolina. And we did see some pretty significant movements on a couple of different pieces of legislation in the North Carolina Senate yesterday.
He walks through those details this morning. Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Andy, a busy Tuesday in Raleigh. We had a couple of different meetings in the North Carolina Senate, the elections subcommittee, then the Rules Committee, then a full meeting of the North Carolina Senate.
We're expecting some additional conversations and discussions coming up a little bit later on today as well. Movement on elections. We talked about this a couple of months ago with a couple of wide-sweeping pieces of legislation that would make some changes. You actually had the ability to speak at one of these meetings in B. in the legislature on Tuesday.
What's the latest that you're following?
Well, we're moving on on these two bills, their House Bill 958, and let me make sure I get this right, 834. There used to be one giant bill and one bill that just had a few changes, but they had a couple of PCSs. Those are proposed committee substitutes. Basically, it's a big amendment that's offered at the beginning of a committee hearing. And so they separated out a lot of the stuff that was in the giant bill and kind of put them in two separate bills here.
I ended up speaking in favor of one of the bills. I just wasn't completely prepared to talk about the other one. The interesting thing here is that there is a lot of Opposition from Democrats on these bills. But the way that, and I don't know if this was intentional or not, but the way that they divided this up, it appears that you're going to still have substantial Democratic opposition for one bill, 958. But the other bill, at least in the committee meeting, the elections committee meeting that I was in, I did not hear any opposition to the vote.
There were some questions asked by Democrats, but it looks like 834 is probably going to sail through, and 958 is the one that's probably going to end up facing a veto from Governor Stein.
So let's start with some of the details in 958. Probably the biggest here moving forward would be changes to the early voting period for primary elections, which of course we typically see in March. Municipal elections, that would include things like city council elections that take place every other year and these kind of special referendum or runoff elections that can, for whatever reason, prop up across North Carolina. This is pretty substantial, Andy, as I understand it, changing some of the dates here. It can.
It reduces the period where you can have early voting from 17 days down to 10 for these. And one thing that was noted several times during the meeting is that these are elections that have substantially less turnout. than general, you know, even number general election years. I mean, you're looking at difference between, say, 60%, some odd 70%, some odd turnout, and about 30%. There's just less of a need to have that spaced out amount of time.
And it's a way of consolidating and saving resources for county boards, especially in these smaller counties, because it is not free either in time, money, or personnel to operate these. And they did not reduce the general election one because at least at the moment, this might be a test case to see how it works. But basically, there's more customers in.
So they're keeping the longer hours for general elections. And you know, Andy, we've seen this consistently. The product of the John Locke Foundation, Carolina elections has a lot of great visual representation of data. And it is blatantly obvious when you look at a primary early voting period. And you look at this bar chart that's right there at the top of the website.
There is very little activity in most cases, sometimes for more than a week. Once the early voting period starts, it's not until you get into that middle to later part of that second week and into that final weekend that you really start seeing an uptick. But even as you noted, even with a bigger uptick, we're still talking about voter percentage turnouts of 2025, maybe 30% at the max, a relatively low number in the grand scale of the more than what 7 million registered voters here in North Carolina. Right. And that's true.
And if you look at that on vote tracker, you will see what you said.
Sometimes we'll have like the first day, there will be a jump. But whatever the first day is, there'll be a jump that day. But oftentimes those first couple of days, that first Thursday and Friday, not much is happening. And it picks up a little bit that second week. And then vroom, that third week just shoots up through the roof.
And that's for all elections. And so there is room, I think, to consolidate those. This probably is a good move on the part of the General Assembly to let these county boards conserve those resources. Was there opposition? I know there was public comment at both of those meetings.
There's a lot of questions being asked. Was there, and I know just, and I'm asking this because we've seen and debated some of this in the past. Was there significant opposition to making some of these changes? And again, I'll note for our audience, this would have no impact on a November or a general election that, for example, like a one that we're seeing coming up later on this year. Yeah, there was from Democrats, both from public speakers and from members of the committee that were speaking.
I mean, there is a belief, or at least a stated belief among Democrats, that anytime you would reduce the number of early voting days, you're going to have some kind of corresponding reduction in the number of votes.
So that if you have. 30%. Uh, fewer voting days, you might have somewhere close to 30 percent fewer votes. I mean, that's not the case. Really, people will adjust and people that intend to vote will vote, you know, no matter what the actual number of days are.
This is what we found. scientific studies as well as, I should say, political science studies.
Some people don't consider that scientific, but political science studies have shown that people will adjust to the system that they have. And we've really, early voting doesn't actually increase turnout. That's been a consistent finding.
Now, you might see a little bit here on the edge, but there hasn't been a consistent body of research that shows that early voting increases turnout.
So more early voting will not increase turnout more.
Well, I know, and as we have typically always talked, and we will do so coming up later on this year, as we get into middle October and the early voting period starts when we catch up, Andy, sometimes two or three times a week. I'll always ask you that: well, what does turnout look like? And you always give the same response and answer: you know, it's hard to tell. Are these people that would have voted on Election Day that have decided to vote early instead? And you really don't know until you've gone past that early November date where Election Day actually takes place to determine those numbers.
So, great point there. That is one of the big changes in House Bill 958. One of the other things in here as well is some performance audits. This has gotten a lot of blowback in North Carolina media over the last couple of weeks as well. What is a performance audit as it relates to elections?
And is this something that you're in favor of moving forward? This is something I've been advocating for for a couple of years now. States like Utah and Texas have this, and I've seen a report from the 2024 report from the Utah audit. And I was reading to this and I was like, man, I would love North Carolina to have some of this. Essentially, this is the Office of the State Auditor, which is the body in charge of auditing all the state agencies.
So that's naturally where you would house this thing. And they would. A performance audit goes through the entire process from voter registration all the way through to election day and post-election ballot security. And it's essentially making sure, especially at the county level, that election officials are properly following the laws and procedures and best practices. Then they will report that to the General Assembly.
They give, if there's any agency or county boards that are in that report, those county boards have an opportunity to respond saying, hey, we didn't make that mistake or, okay, we understand what the problem was and we will make corrections. Directions. And I think all of those elements are going to help this, and I've called this foster a cycle of continuous improvement. Every couple of years, we're going to see what went wrong and how to fix it. And by having this outside entity, rather than just having an organization saying, hey, we're doing great, you can get that confirmation where it's warranted.
I will say also that. And this is important. This doesn't affect election outcomes. They're very specific that this audit doesn't even start until after the election is certified. That's not the purpose of this audit.
We have other audits for that, for basically making sure the numbers go up, count the way they should. This is for making sure that the process being followed is correct. And if it's not, how can we fix it before the next election? And you know, this is very relevant here in a state like North Carolina, where elections, I think it's probably accurate to say, Andy, are relatively decentralized. Yes, we do have this umbrella entity in the North Carolina State Board of Elections, but the State Board of Elections does not actually run a single election across the state of North Carolina.
In all 100 counties, there is a county board of elections with election staff, election volunteers, and other folks that are the ones that are actually responsible for conducting those elections. You would imagine with such a decentralized system that there could be, and I'm using that word very carefully, could be some issues that are taking place across the state.
So we'll keep an eye on the progress there. How about voter challenges? This has been something that we've seen debated in a variety of different bills over the last couple of years. There was some discussion on that in the North Carolina Senate yesterday. First of all, what is a voter challenge, and what are some of the changes that are being proposed here by lawmakers?
Yeah.
Well, a voter challenge is essentially if somebody believes that a person who says, hey, I'm a voter, I have a legal right to vote here. They have reason to believe or they state that they have reason to believe that that person is actually not a legal voter in that location. They can make a challenge to the county board of elections and state their reasons. Then that person who is we'll say the accused here has a chance to demonstrate that they in fact are. And the burden of proof lies with the person making the challenge.
So you have to present some evidence that, hey, Tom Jones doesn't really live in Wake County. for example, or something along those lines, and you can present whatever evidence that you have. Like this person has a more recent registration in Pasquatane County, for example. And so that's what you're looking at. And what this is doing is this is standardizing, kind of bringing early voting kind of back within the absentee rubric.
Early voting has always been a kind of subset of absentee voting in North Carolina.
Now, there was a separation for counting purposes a couple of years ago, but this is kind of bringing it back within that realm. This allows a challenge up to five days after election day for people that they believe are not legal voters. And if you don't have that, then you end up having in a general election where you have a 17-day early voting period, we could have 17 different deadlines. For early voting challenges, which is a recipe for chaos, if there are more than a handful of challenges. And I'm not expecting there to be a jump in challenges because of this law.
Some Democrats have said there would be. And if there are, we certainly can't have 17 days of early voting challenges. Yeah, I mean, your board of elections staff and your election board during that early voting period is already stretched pretty thin with operating, in some cases, 12 or 16 hours of early voting at a couple of different locations each and every day for that lengthy period.
So we'll keep an eye on that. All right, Andy, we're kind of late in the process here. We're about to flip the calendar over to August. We've got a major election here, and a bunch of major elections, I should say, here in North Carolina coming up in November. These proposed changes that we'll be talking about this week and next week out of the General Assembly, will those have any impacts on the midterms that we're seeing coming up in November of 2026?
They will not. I mean, virtually all of the deadlines or the start dates in the bill are starting in 2027. It's getting really late in the game. Early mail ballots, absentee ballots, go out in early September. And so it's really late to try to make changes and implement those.
You'd have to train up all the election workers in some of these things.
Some of these other ones, you'd have to possibly face legal challenges. And so it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it'd be nice to have some of these now, but we're going to have to wait and have them for the next set of elections starting in 2027. We're tracking these two pieces of legislation as they work through the process in the North Carolina Senate. If things go as anticipated, we'll see the North Carolina House up next.
We'll continue our coverage with Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation. He joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timelines, while our human creative director made sure it all made sense.
Easy! Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Wow. Good morning again. It's 5:55.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT rounding out that conversation with Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation on these two pieces of legislation working their way through the North Carolina General Assembly. House Bill 958 alongside House Bill 834, both of them receiving votes in the North Carolina Senate yesterday. House Bill 834 passing 42 to 0 in the Senate, and House Bill 958, which has a lot of those election law changes, passing 28 to 13. There will be a third reading of both of those pieces of legislation coming up in the North Carolina Senate this morning.
They are set to gavel in right around 9 o'clock, according to the current legislative calendar. Once that passes its third reading, which is what we anticipate is set to happen, it will make its way on to the North Carolina. Carolina House, where we are expecting votes there early next week. There is a House session scheduled for Thursday morning.
However, we are not expecting lawmakers to actually be voting during that session. It will be one of those many skeleton sessions that we have watched over the last couple of months as House lawmakers are expected back early next week. We'll see what happens in both chambers there. There will have to be some committee meetings as well in the North Carolina House House elections. A House Rules Committee meeting will have to take place before either of these pieces of legislation make their way to the full floor for a vote.
We'll be keeping a close eye on that. And as we stated during the conversation with Dr. Andy Jackson, none of these changes, in which there are some major ones, lowering that early voting period for primary and municipal elections, some changes to the challenge process for challenged ballots and some of those performance audits. None of that would be taking place in the midterm election. Elections coming up here in just a few short months.
Early voting begins mid-October coming up here across the state of North Carolina. We'll have some of the most comprehensive coverage of those midterm elections over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. And as always, right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. That's going to do it for a Wednesday edition. 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. Yeah.
