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Duplicate Voter Records; Helene Road Recovery; School Grading Changes

Carolina Journal Radio / Nick Craig
The Truth Network Radio
October 26, 2026 6:12 am

Duplicate Voter Records; Helene Road Recovery; School Grading Changes

Carolina Journal Radio / Nick Craig

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October 26, 2026 6:12 am

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is facing a formal complaint from the Public Interest Legal Foundation after the organization identified more than 3,600 potentially duplicate voter registration records. State election officials say efforts to identify and remove duplicate registrations are ongoing. Meanwhile, western North Carolina continues its long recovery from Hurricane Helene, with major road and bridge reconstruction projects expected to take years despite additional federal funding. Bryce Fiedler of the Carolinas Academic Leadership Network joins the program to discuss recommendations from a state task force, where a majority favors eliminating the A-F grading system used to evaluate North Carolina public schools. Plus, a look at the latest early voting numbers as North Carolina enters the final week of early voting ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We start off with some statewide news as the Public Interest Legal Foundation, known as PILF. Has filed a Help America Vote Act, a HAVA complaint, against the North Carolina State Board of Elections after finding thousands of apparent duplicate and triplicate voter registrations in the statewide voter database. The Alexandria, Virginia-based public interest law firm, which focuses on election integrity, said in a press release last week that it had identified three thousand six hundred and seventy-four what they called matched set records ahead of the twenty twenty-six general election. The new findings represent an increase from the more than 1,200 apparent duplicate voter registration records that PILF initially found on North Carolina's voter rolls earlier this year. Logan Churchwell, who is the research director for PILF, told the Carolina Journal earlier this month that the duplicate registrations stem from the same person being registered multiple times under variations or varieties.

Of their own name, he gave Carolina Journal this example, saying someone living at one two three Main Street could be registered twice because at one point they went to the DMV and filled out all of the forms and had all of the documents. The social security number was a part of that transaction, and it gets the register, it gets the registration for the voter. But later on, they move across the county and in a grocery store shopping lot, some. Canvaser with a clipboard says, "Hey, do you want to register to vote?" The person goes, "Oh yeah, I moved. I guess I better update that." But that person is uncomfortable providing their social security number and putting it on a clipboard and giving it to a random person.

Churchill said that a middle initial could be omitted, a middle name could be written out, or a person could have used a nickname while registering. Differences in punctuation, symbols, or extra spaces could also prevent records from matching. When combined with the missing identifying information, such as a driver's license number or the last four digits of a social security number, those variations could unintentionally create a duplicate registration. Churchwell told the Carolina Journal that the ultimate point we're approaching here is we don't want to play whack-a-mole with the state. People are going to die.

Duplicates are going to happen. The voter rolls are a consistent work in progress. But instead of saying, "Look at all these duplicates; you should do something about it," what we're trying to present to them is that there are duplicates that we do not need, and we do need to do something about them. But we need to approach this from a System level solution, not just merging these records that should be merged together and moving on. The public interest law firm has said that the North Carolina State Board of Elections, rather, did not respond to the foundation's request by October the thirteenth, and that it would file what is called a HAVA complaint if the identified issues were not resolved.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a press release, their communications director said North Carolina has made significant progress in cleaning up its voter rolls, and the board, referring to the board of elections, deserves credit for removing thousands of duplicate registrations. PILF's expanded review shows that more work is needed. Accurate voter rolls are vital to public confidence in elections. Churchwell also credited the North Carolina State Board with significant progress when they spoke to Carolina Journal earlier this month. Particularly since a new board was appointed last year, and Sam Hayes became their executive director.

In an emailed statement to Carolina Journal last Wednesday, Sam Hayes, who is the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said, "It quote PILF has acknowledged that North Carolina has made significant progress in cleaning up its voter rolls, and the board deserves credit for removing thousands of duplicate registrations." Hayes also went on to say in that emailed statement that the state board had received the PILF complaint, but it had not communicated with the organization since meeting with some of its representatives last year. He said that the work of voter list maintenance is ongoing, including a pilot program I initiated to explore the use of rule-based matching and statistical probability scoring to detect duplicate registrations. One of the ways in which the board has taken action in recent years is what is called the registration repair project. We talked about that in great detail here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. It was a major Initiative to collect missing identification numbers from roughly 103,000 registered voters across the state of North Carolina whose records lacked that required ID information.

Under HAVA, the Help America Vote Act, which has been enshrined in federal law now for more than 20 years, voter registration applicants who have a current and valid driver's license must provide that license number. Other applicants may provide the last four digits of their Social Security number, unless they have either number, in which case the state assumes a unique identifying number to track down that voter. For nearly a decade, however. North Carolina's voter registration form lacked clear instructions, resulting in tens of thousands of registrations being submitted without that required information. That registration application was corrected in January of 2024, but for nearly 10 years prior to that, it was not, leading to the more than 103,000 individuals that did not have that information on file.

Sam Hayes continued by. Saying my administration is committed to using every legal means to achieve the most accurate voter rolls in the country. That includes using the federal save database for voter list maintenance purposes and the full modernization of our nearly thirty-year-old legacy election management system. Under the Save Database, which has nothing to do with the Federal Save Act, which has been a big discussion in Washington D.C. throughout the year, but using that Save Database resulted in ten non-citizens being indicted by a federal grand jury in the last couple of weeks on charges of allegedly lying about their citizenship status and voting illegally in North Carolina elections.

U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle told reporters at a press conference. Back on October the fifteenth, quote: "This is the thing that they say it never happens. It's happening again and again and again until we finally said enough." Every single illegal voter cancels the ballot of an American citizen who followed the rules. This is not a minor hiccup.

It is an assault on the constitutional principle and the only and that only Americans decide American elections, and that is part of the central fabric of our constitutional republic. Hayes said at that press conference back on the 15th that the alleged illegal voters were identified after state board staff ran the state's voter rolls through the federal systematic alien verification for entitlements, which is the SAVE database, in April, and relayed that information to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. He said during the press conference, "I made election integrity a priority in my administration since I took office, and those efforts are bearing fruit." For those who say we are supporting a lie, this is the reality. Hayes also told Carolina Journal recently in an emailed statement that the focus of the state board over the next several weeks must be to support the efforts of counties to successfully administer an election that is secure and accessible to every legal voter in the state. PILF has monitored voter registrations in North Carolina since 2019, and says that North Carolina is among several states with a history of this problem of duplicate registrations.

Churchwell wanted to assure voters that eliminating duplicate registrations would not prevent eligible ballots from being counted. He said, in part, "We're not playing gotcha. We're not trying to prevent people from voting. In fact." Let's say North Carolina took every single scrape of data that we had and implemented it all. Not a single person would lose their voter registration.

They would just lose their second one. PILF says that it plans to continue reviewing North Carolina's voter registrations each year, beginning in late summer or early fall, and so they will continue that a process and continue to scrutinize North Carolina's voter rolls. And in this case. Highlight what they claim to be more than thirty six hundred duplicate registrations, what they call match set records, ahead of the twenty twenty six general election. This has been a story and a couple of things with the Public Interest Legal Foundation that we have been following over the last couple of weeks.

You can read more on this story this morning by visiting our website carolinajournal dot com. Look for the story with the headline: NC Elections Board faces complaint. Over duplicate voter records. Have you ever thought about the difference between paying rent and owning a home? When you rent, your monthly payment helps cover the cost of living there, but it usually doesn't build anything for your future.

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One of the stories, or a series of stories, we've been following over the past two years here on the Carolina Journal News Hour is Western North Carolina recovery. This is, of course, after Hurricane Helene devastated the western half of the state back in September of 2024, and North Carolina transportation officials report. That thousands of Hurricane Helene repairs have been completed, but major Western North Carolina routes can still face and will still face years of reconstruction. Recent briefings addressed three separate questions from residents and policymakers: which connections have been restored, what remains unfinished, and how these construction projects affect daily access at the North Carolina State Board of Transportation's. October meeting in Hickory, Transportation Secretary Daniel Johnson described his recent visits to the recovery projects, saying in part, "I travel in Division Eleven and Thirteen, both to see how much progress we've been has been made." Other than a few bridge projects, Division 11 is more or less done with their Helene recovery, which is remarkable since they had over 300 million dollars in damage just two years ago.

Daniel Johnson also described meeting Yancey County maintenance employees who have been working despite their own losses, saying these are the guys who were the front line workers as the storm was hitting. They lost food, they lost their cars, some of them even lost their homes. These are the Guys who are on the ground from day one, trying to reach people and help them get access. I had a great meeting with them and took a tour of North Carolina 197 South, where three bridges are in different stages of rehabilitation. Johnson then pointed to several road projects that illustrate the difference between restoring temporary access and completing permanent repairs.

The first, the Elk River Road, where flooding destroyed the bridge that carried traffic over the river towards the falls, he noted that they used a temporary railcar bridge to restore traffic until a permanent structure opened in late 2025. He also highlighted two other projects in April. County, where crews replaced damaged crossings, including another temporary railcar bridge and a new permanent structure. Johnson said, "Sawhick Hollow Road, where flooding destroyed the small single-lane bridge that carried traffic over the Elk River. There was another site there where we used a railcar bridge until a permanent bridge opened just last month.

We saw Avery High School Road, where the culvert that carried the Kentucky Creek." Under the road, washed out for the second time in twenty years. We replaced that culvert with a new bridge, and that also opened last month. Johnson said that these completed projects demonstrate that the the progress that has been made since the storm, even as larger reconstruction efforts remained unfinished. He said during the meeting again that we've made tremendous strides, building back stronger than we were before before the storm, and we've still got a long way to go on some of these major projects. Long ways to go, and where we need to get before that storm hit.

But incredible progress, and it was great being out here. While those projects have been completed, other heavily damaged roads face much longer reconstruction timelines. At a September the twenty-first Polk County briefing, they outlined the challenges facing repairs along U.S. one seventy-six in the Tryon area. According to NCDOT resident engineer Mike Patton, he said during the September.

Late September meeting quote: We hope within a year or possibly even less that we have the upper section back to normal. The lower section that goes through the gorge will remain closed for some time, saying that the damage down there is catastrophic and it will take some time to fix. We anticipate, hopefully, having it done by late 2029. Patton also addressed questions about why repairs to U.S. 176 are taking so long, explaining that projects of this scale typically require years of planning, design, and permitting before construction can even begin.

He said during the meeting, a project of this scope would normally take somewhere between six to ten years before it actually went to construction. Because in front of that, you have the design work, the permitting, all of the environmental stuff. You have to do everything. We managed to condense that down to just a couple of years. And the more complex these hurricane projects were, the longer it is taken to get them out the door, even on a condensed schedule.

Beyond the legacy, the lengthy planning and permitting process, some projects face additional challenges once the shovels actually break ground and construction does begin. For example, on Green River Cove Road, North Carolina DOT resident engineer Patrick Eubanks said that repairs to damaged bridges and sections of the roadway will require temporary closures because crews have limited space to work while maintaining. He said during the meeting that there are also bridges on that road that have to be repaired. Two of them had major damage to them. They have to come in and replace the approach slabs on both sides of those bridges.

At some point in this process, we'll finish the river section. We'll work on those bridges, and then there there will probably be hard closures for sections in the switchbacks so that we can start building those walls and repairing those failures. There's not a lot of room to move traffic around us while we're working over in those areas. Those construction-related Closures could also affect emergency services, temporarily cutting off routes currently accessible to first responders. NCDOT District Engineer Troy Wilson said that transportation officials are working with emergency emergency personnel to prepare for some of those disruptions, although longer response times do remain possible.

He said, "We realize that emergency vehicles can use can can use those currently, but there's going to be temporarily those will be temporarily suspended because they won't be able to physically get through there. We continue to work with them, make sure that the schedules they know what they are, and that other units may have to respond, and that of course, looking at the potential of an extended response time for emergency services." As Carolina Journal reported on October the 20th, federal officials announced an additional 873 million dollars for Hurricane Helene transportation repairs in North Carolina. The funding announcement did not change the projected completion dates for any of the current road repairs and projects, whether they are in the design, permitting, environmental, or construction stages. The challenges illustrate the different stages of road recovery across. Western North Carolina, while some smaller crossings have been restored with permanent bridges, many of them just opening within the last couple of weeks.

More extensive reconstruction projects remain years from final completion. Even with additional federal funding, NC DOT officials must continue to navigate construction constraints, road closures, and funding challenges before all of those affected routes can reopen. This is something that we have continued to track as.

So much of the transportation network in Western North Carolina was so heavily damaged after Hurricane Helene. You can read the update on this most recent story. We will continue to track this for the for the following or for the following months and years as we continue to see these announcements. The headline over on our website, CarolinaJournal dot com, WNC road recovery faces longer timelines. For many people, renting is a convenient option.

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Fit your lifestyle, and here's something that many people don't realize: there are education programs and financial assistance options available for first-time homebuyers.

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Determined by a license provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details. It's five thirty-seven. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, one hundred seven point nine FM, WBT.

I'm Nick Craig. Good Monday morning to you. As we continue our education discussion here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, one of the metrics that families can use across the state is looking at what grade their school receives. It's pretty self-explanatory. Schools can receive an A through an F grade, and as we have learned throughout our public school or private school education, we know how that ranking works.

However, there are some new discussions here in North Carolina about actually getting rid of that rating. To walk through some of those details this morning, it's my pleasure as always to welcome Bryce Fielder from the Callen. Organization to our airwaves here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, Bryce. I would imagine that this is a pretty useful tool for families to look at, maybe when they're moving across the state or moving into the state for the first time, seeing where their school ranks on this A to F report card. Give us a little background on this, and then what your thoughts are on it.

Absolutely, and it really is for for families and parents.

So, North Carolina has an A through F rating scale that's tied to its school report cards, which come out annually. And it's also something that's actually baked into the law. The A through F rating scale is a statutory requirement that's been around since 2013. And so, there's a task force working for the state board of education at the moment that is considering some changes to the rating scale as we know it. And they're essentially reviewing three different options.

Okay, the first is just to keep the A through Rating scale as we know it. The second is to use descriptive terms, which is similar to what South Carolina does, or even potentially things like a star system. And the third option would be to drop the public rating entirely and just report the numerical data. And as I understand it, reading through some of the reporting that Carolina Journal has done, option three is where most members of the task force are leaning. And personally, I would rank that as the least favorable outcome.

And maybe we can talk about why that is. But that's sort of where the Stand at the moment.

So let's start at this third option that seems to have the majority of this task force. What would this be like—a fifty to a hundred point scale, or a zero to one hundred point scale that schools would be rated on? I'm not even sure there would be a public-facing rating at all. What you would get is various numerical data tied to things like test scores and student performance, things that are already rated. But basically, we would drop the the letter rating or the thing that the parents and the public can easily identify right on the front.

And what you'd probably have to do as a result of that is dig into some of the data a little bit, and then on top of that, compare those results with other schools to actually know how the school is performing, and that. What's so important about a rating system is it gives you a lot of data at a at a specific glance, right? A indicates obviously excellent, top performing. Down to F indicates low performing, needs some work, and that's really why it's a useful public tool to have this sort of rating system.

So the data would still be there; it would just be a little bit harder to make sense of. You know that's a really good point about a number system. You could look at a number, we're pulling out of a hat, eighty-two. That could be a good number if the mean is in the seventies or the sixties. But if everybody's above ninety, Bryce, eighty-two could actually mean not that great of a score.

So having that direct comparison could be a real problem. And let's be perfectly honest; I can't imagine the vast majority of families across the state of North Carolina are going to bother digging into standardized testing scores that come back in third and fifth grade. Through graduation rates and other proficiency levels, there's a lot of public school data. Don't get me wrong; I can't imagine that the vast majority of people are truly interested in digging into that, or may even know exactly what to do with that data. That's exactly right, and that that data is important.

That academic or that data rather is important for academic and research purposes. Groups like the John Locke Foundation and us at Carolina Journal use that data all the time. But from a public standpoint, you're really losing a lot of information at face value. I mean, imagine you're you're a parent having a conversation with your friend, and you go from saying, "Yeah, we attend to see school, and it's doing some of these things right, and we could use improvement over here," and now you're comparing and contrasting test scores and proficiency and. A lot of things really get lost in the weeds, and that's not to say that that data shouldn't be available to the public.

It certainly should, but it should come with a simplistic reflection of how the schools are actually performing, which is what you get with a rating system to begin with. You mentioned option two, our neighbors to the south in South Carolina. You said already have a system set up like that. Walk us through how that process plays out. I know you do a lot of work in South Carolina as well.

What exactly are the details on that? Yeah, it's a pretty similar system.

So South Carolina also has annual school report cards, which give a reflection of each school's performance, and it works on a descriptive scale.

So instead of an A through F rating, we use terms like excellent for the top performing schools, and lowest performing is unsatisfactory. And so South Carolina, rather, just released its new school report cards, and the conversation here is not about changing the rating system, but about how much progress that South. Carolina has made in the last couple years, and I say here, some of your listeners may know, Carolina's Academic Leadership Network works in both North and South Carolina. I'm based here in South Carolina. We do a lot of work in North Carolina too, so we have a really good bird's eye view of what's happening in both states.

And that was just an interesting contrast to me right now, where South Carolina is talking about the progress that has been made on these most recent school cards, and North Carolina is doing that too. But the current conversation is, what do we need to do to change the rating scale? That's what's standing out. Yeah, kind of shuffling the chairs around, maybe in North Carolina, when not necessarily diving into some of the relevant and important data that needs to obviously continue to expand here. But you mentioned something at the beginning that's interesting.

This would require laws to be changed in North Carolina, Bryce. We don't dive into a lot of the partisan political stuff when you and I talk, but let's be perfectly honest about it. We've got Mo Greene, a Democrat, in the as the superintendent of public instruction. He will be there. For two more years in that position, we currently have a Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly.

Inherently, that creates some level of political issue. Is this conversation all moot if lawmakers aren't even interested in moving forward with this? Ultimately, yes, that that would be the outcome. And as I understand it, this task force has been directed to come up with a recommendation that's going to be presented to the state board of education, and then the state board would have to take some sort of action, which ultimately would go before the general assembly.

So there are a few steps that have to first occur here. Look, even if you get buy-in from the state board of education, and perhaps the results could change after the outcome of this election, but it's a pretty big lift for the general assembly to say this thing that we've been doing for just over a decade, which many parents like, let's walk that back and actually pass a law that removes the rating system. It's you know, it's always hard to speculate on what lawmakers might do, but I have pretty good reason to think that that could come be met with some resistance.

Well, and you made a good point earlier that this was first introduced in twenty. 2013. That was just a couple of years after Republicans took majorities in the North Carolina General Assembly. Obviously, we're going to wait and see after the November the third election whether that changes or remains the same. But Bryce, to your point, it would seem pretty logical that lawmakers that implemented this more than a decade ago would probably be interested in keeping it in place since they're the ones that proposed it and enshrined it in state law.

That's right, and if we think about the reasons why someone might advocate for changing the system, I mean, look, A through F, it's harsh, right? I mean, no one wants to see a D or an F next to their school, their local neighborhood school. But that's also in part the point in that we hope that this will really light a fire under everyone involved, so that ultimately we can all improve.

So there's an element of transparency here. There's obviously an element of accountability. You can see at a very quick glance how schools are. Performing, and I'm sure legislators appreciate that just as much as parents do. And if I had to imagine, I would think parents would probably be the ultimate advocate of keeping something like this in place.

Bryce, when we chatted a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the opportunity scholarship program. We talked about the expansion of school choice, and one of the discussions and conversations that you and I had about that is that when you do introduce school choice, it's kind of this rising tide raises all ships analogy. And hopefully, if you've got very good public and/or private schools in a community, everybody kind of gets lifted up by that. This seems like it would kind of go counter to that. You have a lot of transparency.

With private school, because if your child's not getting a good education, you vote with your feet. You vote with your dollars. You move your child to another school. It seems like removing this A to F grading system or getting rid of a scale completely would only maybe make the arguments that many school choice advocates make and bolster those even stronger. Yeah, I think that's a good point, and this would come at a bad time overall in the general public's perception about education and what we know about the level of trust in public education.

And honestly, we should be doing everything we can to make data more accessible and more open, so that the public has a clear picture of what's going on in our schools. And this is tied to a number of different. You mentioned this earlier in the conversation about what's actually under the hood and how are things being calculated. I mean, there are at least some school districts in North Carolina that have a. No zero policy, or a policy called a grading floor, and that students can't receive less than a 50 for the for the semester or the quarter, regardless of the work that they actually turn in.

So there are a number of things that we should think about keeping in place for transparency, and then also some policy solutions that we should be looking at to make sure that grading retains its integrity and actually reflects how students are performing in school. Yeah, and we've seen that argument a lot. You can have a student that literally does zero work and gets fifty. You can have another student who works really hard and is just not maybe retaining the material and getting a sixty. And the fact that there's only a ten point gap between those two individuals, Bryce, has been a major topic in school board races, many of which are taking place this year and have taken place over the last couple of years here in North Carolina.

Yeah, and in fact, I've heard from some teachers that work in a district that have a grading floor in North Carolina, and they've described a scenario where: imagine a student in the first semester doesn't put in a lot of effort; they get a minimum fifty percent grade. Then they apply themselves in the second semester and go on to get a seventy.

Well, that averages out to a sixty, which goes on to be a passing grade. And so the result of that is you're actually disincentivizing kids to give a full effort or really trying at all when you have certain policies like this. And earlier we talked about South. Carolina, I always think it's interesting to see how the two are moving educationally, and when they can take ideas and what's working in one state and apply it in another. And earlier this year, South Carolina passed one of the first laws in the nation banning grade floors.

And I know there's been some interest at the local level about what we can do to reform grading policies in North Carolina.

So that'll be an interesting thing to follow into the future. Yeah, well, maybe see if there is some action in the education realm as it relates to that in the General Assembly as we flip the calendar over to twenty twenty-seven. Bryce is always tell us a little bit about calendar and how folks can get involved. Sure, you can find our website at schoolboardleader.com. We provide training and professional development to North and South Carolina school board members, and of course, with the elections coming up early next month, there's going to be a lot of incoming and first-time officeholders, and we've got some great tools and programs and resources set up and ready to go so that we can be empowering our school board members from day one.

So we're really excited about that. It's a great conversation as always. We appreciate the time this morning. Bryce Fielder from Callen joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. For many people, renting is a convenient option.

It offers flexibility and may require less responsibility for maintenance. But owning a home can offer a different set of long-term benefits. Instead of paying rent to a landlord each month, homeowners are investing in a property that can potentially increase in value over time. That means your home may become an asset as you continue to live in it. Homeownership can also provide more control over your living space, from decorating to renovations.

That really fit your lifestyle, and here's something that many people don't realize: there are education programs and financial assistance options available for first-time home buyers.

Some of these programs even offer grant funding that may help cover part of the upfront cost, and grants typically don't have to be repaid. That's why learning about home ownership options can be an important step toward making the best decision for you and your family. To learn more, visit toolsforhomeownership.com. Ready to feel more energized and in control of your health? If you've tried diet and exercise but still aren't seeing the results you're looking for, it may be time to explore a different approach.

At OrderlyMeds.com, you can connect with licensed medical providers through a simple virtual process, all from the comfort of home, and find out if a GLP-1 treatment may be right for you. Learn more at OrderlyMeds.com. That's OrderlyMeds.com. Compounded medications are not FDA. Approved eligibility determined by a licensed provider.

Individual results may vary. See website for details. Good morning again. It's five fifty-five. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, one hundred seven point nine FM, WBT.

We have got some brand new early voting statistics, hot off the presses, from the final full weekend of early voting. As there were more than one hundred and seventy voting locations open in North Carolina both Saturday and Sunday over the weekend, and we have now crossed more than one point five million. Individuals that have cast ballots in person during the early voting period, more than fifty thousand mail and civilian ballots have mail ballots have been returned, and a little bit more than ninety two hundred military and overseas ballots. That brings us to about a nineteen percent turnout at this point in the early voting period. Democrats do continue with their major advantage there.

More than six hundred and thirty three thousand of individuals registered have Democrat. Have shown up to vote. That rolls out to about forty-one point six percent, followed by unaffiliateds at five hundred and twenty-three thousand plus voters. That breaks down to thirty-four point four percent, and finally the Republican Party at three hundred and sixty-two thousand voters. That is twenty-three point eight percent.

Democrats do continue with their major early voting advantage that they racked up in the first few days throughout last week. We did see Republicans attempting to make slow gains there. The million-dollar question: Will there be enough time for them to get up to levels needed to be competitive as we roll onto election night? We will dive into all those details coming up tomorrow morning with Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation, right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour.

That's going to do it for a Monday edition. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, five to six, right here on Charlottesville's FM News Talk, one hundred seven point nine FM, WBT. Ready to feel more energized and in control of your health? If you've tried diet and exercise but still aren't seeing the results you're looking for, it may be time to explore a different approach.

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