>> Good morning, North Carolina.

And happy Election Day.

I'm Karen Brinson-Bell executive director of the State Board of Elections.

I'm here with Paul Cox, general counsel to the state board who will help answer your questions in a moment.

Today is the last day for eligible registered North Carolinians to cast their ballot in this important election.

Polls across the state are open until 07:30PM.

And if you are in line at 07:30PM, you will be able to vote.

Voters should go to their assigned polling place to find your polling place.

Use the voter search tool on the state board website.

ncsbe.gov And Don't forget to bring your photo ID.

Yesterday we sent out a press release titled 10 Tips for Election Day voters in North Carolina.

Police shared these tips with your audience is so we can have a smooth election day as well.

If you haven't voted yet, please take time today to make your voice heard.

As a reminder, all voters will be asked to show photo identification when they check in to vote.

Most voters will simply show their driver's license.

But many types of photo ID will be accepted.

Go to bringitnc.gov For more information about the photo ID requirement and a full list of acceptable ID's.

We also want to remind voters that if you forget your ID poll workers must offer you a provisional ballot.

And the opportunity to either fill out an idea exception for explaining why you are unable to show photo.

I D. Return to your county board of elections office to show your photo ID before 05:00PM on November 14th.

No voter should be turned away from the polls for not having an ID with them.

At this time.

We are unaware of any disruptions or delays at polling places that may necessitate extending voting hours beyond 07:30PM.

That simply remarkable considering more than 2600 polling places open statewide this morning.

We will continue to monitor polling places statewide and if necessary.

We will call a state board meeting to consider any voting extensions.

At this time.

We have not heard reports of any major incidents at any polling places.

We also have not heard reports of long lines today.

It is a good day to go vote.

We have been addressing reports that the state board's voter search tool on ncsbe.gov has been running a bit slow today.

This is not unusual for election days when 10's of thousands of people are accessing the search tool at the same time.

We asked voters to be patient and wait for your information to load.

Finally, we want to remind the public that they can watch results come in tonight after polls close on the state board's elections result dashboard found at ncsbe.gov.

We remind members of the media to read the press release 9 facts about the vote counting and reporting process in North Carolina.

There are a few important things to remember about election night results.

They are always unofficial in the days after the election, bipartisan election officials in all 100 counties will ensure every eligible ballot is counted.

They will audit and ultimately certified the results.

This is called the campus process and it occurs after every election.

For local contest.

The county boards will certify results on November.

15th.

For all other contests.

The state board will certify the final results on November.

26th.

The state Board anticipates that the unofficial results reported by the end of election night will include about 98% of all ballots cast in the election.

Over the 10 day campus period, provisional ballots and some absentee ballots will be counted and uploaded to the results dashboard.

These ballots are required to be counted after election day by law.

And North Carolina's election officials will follow that law.

Election officials do not call elections.

Projections are made by media and or the candidates using unofficial results typically based on exit polls or the vote difference and the number of votes yet to be counted in a contest.

Election officials will go through the post election canvass processes as required by law.

No matter how close the contest.

Stay tuned to the state board for additional press releases and we will send out a notice for any additional press conferences in the coming days.

With that.

We'll take your questions.

We'll start in the room first and then we'll go to the phone or online and remind those folks who are going using the phone or online system to press one when they do ask their questions.

So is there anyone in the room you'll go to one of the mikes if you would place.

>> I thank you for doing this and the other press conferences leading up to today.

Brittany Gibson from Politico.

I just wanted to follow up on something you had mentioned at last week's press conference about when you expect to have your unofficial tabulations tonight.

You mentioned they believe in Twenty-twenty.

It was about 12 a little after 12:30AM.

Where do you project tonight being and I eat, you know, with the coffee out of, of course, you know, you're not going to rush to the last times.

>> So are official final upload in Twenty-twenty was 12:28AM.

on that Wednesday morning.

And so I have challenged everyone to let's meet that or do better than that.

Now.

We have to be re.

You face reality of it is our goal.

But, you know, there are a lot of votes to deal with once the polls close with this election, the new to our laws.

We cannot tabulate and upload the early voting results at the close of polls like we've been able to do in the past.

So those will not be released until after the polls closed.

The tabulators will be closed down in the results will be uploaded with the election night results as they come in.

So at 07:30PM, we will release the absentee By-mail results.

We will just begin to gather the results from the Election Day.

Polling sites and you have be mindful that we do not modem results in North Carolina.

So if you just factor in that, if the polls are able to close at 07:30PM, because no one is in line, it's going to still take a solid hour or so before the results would be driven to the county board site.

And we've got over 2600 plate bowling places that have to do that tonight.

So the bulk of our results we anticipate would be probably between 9, 9.30, to 11:00PM and you will address anything that's that's running slower than that.

We'll also caution everyone that that's a large volume of data hitting our results dashboard at the same time.

So just like we're experiencing some lag because of the interest in art.

Better search tool, we may be experiencing some lags in the results just because of the sheer volume of data that's going in and the interest that we're seeing in our results.

Thank you.

And coming up with CBS 17, thank you, guys.

I've 2 questions.

One, you said that thankfully no major issues reported yet this morning.

If you guys have seen any issues at all, whether it be this morning are over early voting.

>> We'll have those been and second question being.

>> We've been hearing that the >> damage from Helene in western North Carolina, thankfully isn't impacting the election so much.

Is that the same that you are you guys still seeing that this morning that things are running smoothly there?

>> So again, no incidents to speak of.

And there were just I think 3, maybe for polling places that had some delay in getting going, but they turned no voter away.

They went to their manual process or were able to move things along quickly.

So, you know, we feel like knock on wood now we're in very good shape.

Obviously, there could be some sort of disruption.

And, you know, we've had accidents to happen near polling place that's delayed traffic or and, you know, power outages, something like that that might create a problem throughout the day.

But with the good weather and the good planning and so forth.

We're hopeful that we won't see any further disruptions that would cause any delay.

And then in terms of of the Helene affected counties, as we've reported out.

You know, we had a 57% turnout between absentee and early voting ballots for for North Carolinians and in the western part of our state.

Those Helene affected counties actually out paced the rest of North Carolina with about a 59% turnout.

So and as we know, we're going into Election Day, we are finding that they were able to get their polling places open on time and we did get those with 7 tense up and operational for for places that had no facility to to locate for pole and locate voting in.

And and and that's all gone smoothly to.

So I think it's just a real testament to the hard work and preparation that these election officials have put in to making this election goes smoothly and also just a testament to our partners with state emergency management dot the power companies.

So many north on National Guard.

So many people that I could identify who it helped to make today possible in those Helene affected counties.

Thank you.

I can just shop the ABC 11.

I also have to partner just understand.

It's really early wondering if there's any preliminary info about.

>> The number of talented and cast in person today to the first few hours, at least and then secondly, and he touched on the process kind of longer term before the vote is ultimately certified.

But what sort of immediately after the polls closed today, the role that the BIA we will play in kind of gathering the ballots physically counting them up, sort of can walk voters through what role you guys will play and kind of getting the count started.

Yeah.

>> I don't have our 10 o'clock count that we can try to get that if not, will try to get that out before you too long where we gather from the county's the kind of turnout that they're seeing in terms of.

Is your question about the role of the state board in the counting of ballots where the downtown?

Yeah, I guess, you know, I think I think just for folks that are curious, what was sort of happen immediately once the once the polls close to kind of get get this process started.

>> So all ballots are counted at the local level.

I do want to emphasize that those precinct officials that have been overseeing the voting sites.

They are going to tabulate and sign off on those results.

Tapes and then they will be the ones who transport them securely back to the county boards of elections that could mean they have a series of seals that are tamper resistant SEALs where they will have a flash drive in the actual paper ballots because we are 100% pay per state.

So the tabulators have been used to be more efficient in our county, but there was always a paper record and all of that will be transported securely following chain of custody.

These are bipartisan officials who have taken oaths to serve in those polling places and to carry out this work.

They will deliver those to the county boards.

The county boards will take chain of custody of those materials.

They will have to verify that everything was there that was supposed to be transported and then as they input those results into an air gap, meaning not connected to the Internet aggregation computer, the software's they are to aggregate these results.

They're going to check against the results tapes to make sure the right stick.

A flash drive came back to them that the ballots that were cast are or what's in those results files and they will aggregate that they will then save those results and uploads periodically on new flash drives.

They take that over to our secure state election.

Information management system, which is where they're able to access the election night results and anytime they do those uploads, they're using a new flash drive so that we have no cross.

You know that again, they don't take anything from a network computer back to an air gap computer.

So that's where tonight and then we'll go through reconciliation processes and sample hand.

I count son and a review of eligibility and so forth as we go through the certification period next year.

>> David Hodges, WBTV in Charlotte.

I was wherever you get a little bit more into the process of let's hope there are no delays at any point locations and you keep the track record you have right now.

However, I think for most elections, we have seen an issue with either some type of delay or computer glitch.

Can we really get?

Would you mind kind of really describing the process of if there is an issue out of point location?

I love how the complaint would be for and how the state Board of elections gets together into deciding whether or not to leave a precinct open later or close it when it's being designed to.

>> Now, if you jinxed us, I'm calling you at 01:00AM.

Yeah.

>> Yeah.

So the way that our our laws written if there is a delay that extends more than 15 minutes or more than that is something that gets reported to us.

It really the counties are very good about reporting any delays to us, but they help us to understand, you know, at the 15 minute, mark or greater, what were the circumstances?

We all stand.

One key thing that the state would always wants to know is were any voters turned.

And so the situation that I mentioned this morning, the voters patiently waited in line.

They we're able to get processed and check in.

And then we you know, they they were able to vote without issues.

So we did not have a delay or disruption in voting.

And so that's what the state board ways when they consider it.

So the role that I have and in general counsel Cox, we will take that information to the board members determine if a meeting needs to be called.

And at this time there, there's not a situation so let's just say that there were to be a traffic accident that blocks entry to a boating side today.

Them we would certainly work with that county to determine if it's such a situation that would require moving moving the polling place or is it such a situation that there was just a delay in voting and perhaps the board needs to consider whether anyone was turned away or not.

That's the real key is whether anyone was kept from voting.

>> Your morning, Curt Devine, CNN, wondering if you can characterize the amount of Mister Dis-information that that you've seen this election cycle and speak for a moment to whether the state board has a strategy for countering those types of false.

It's.

>> North Carolina elections.

Mike, many most of our colleagues across the country have have certainly been subjected to some level of medicine and disinformation.

But you know, what I think is really important is how we address that.

And and we have worked since 2019 on a campaign around the hashtag your vote counts in C. Efforts on social media efforts on our Web site efforts through press availability in press releases to inform North Carolinians about our processes in North Carolina so that when they're presented with misinformation, they question that and know to go to trusted sources of information like the state board like our county boards like vote.gov.

And in others that are trusted sources of information.

We also have very transparent processes in North Carolina where citizens our our workers, your 25,000 people are making today possible and are voting sites operate so when you win, you know that there's so many people that are involved, that they are able to help.

You know, provide the truth, provide the facts and similarly.

You know, we also are transparent in our pre-election testing is open to the public are post-election audits are open to the public.

The meetings that they spot partisan boards are having are open to the public.

And so I think that we actually have not seen the degree of you know, what we would say or misinformation posts to any great extent larger than what we've seen and maybe other elections and perhaps to some degree a little less, which I think really speaks to the efforts that we've we've put out there.

>> One specific follow-up is that we've seen federal authorities in recent days put out some specific statements about dis-information that they've identified.

Has the state board heard from federal federal authorities on anything specific or that type of dis-information that is actually touched upon North Carolina in some way.

>> We are in communication with our local, state and federal partners to help us to monitor.

We are station today with individuals who are ensuring that we are not subjected to cyberattacks.

Allure misinformation.

That could be of a domestic or foreign malign influence and in our case you know, we have not been the target knocking on wood that some of our colleagues in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona have been with AI faults.

Videos, but we are certainly monitoring in hopes that we would not be in.

Our federal authorities have kept the surprise of any efforts that directly target us as a swings day.

We are sometimes messed into some of the missing dis-information that many of us are subject to.

But it we are not at this point directly targeted.

>> Yes, keep going.

I have to wait until Election Day to vote this morning.

I have never received so many text messages and voice mails in my entire life.

So tier to your point on transparency, would you mind kind of detailing for viewers, you know what is transparent and what is secret and the voting process so that people understand that.

>> So our voter rolls are public record.

>> And so that you know, it.

And it's certainly I think campaigners like that.

But it is also it's a it's a way that we're transparent.

We it is not known how you voted is simply known that you participated in the election and so this is, you know, there's a transparency in that.

So that if you were not an eligible voter air, you could be challenged.

That is part of our processes in North Carolina that we haven't seen anything of any significance there.

But, you know, we there are ways that people in this day and age are able to access, you know, they can access our voter records in terms of who's a registered voter, you know, and obviously there are other lists where they can try to get as close a match to phone numbers and emails and things like that.

And so yes, my mailbox, my inbox, my text messages have been pretty ramp, but even though I voted early on in the early voting period and so, you know, it's not necessarily generated from the state board.

We did send out to text messages directly from the state board to voters who had signed up for the ballot Trax service to make sure that they need the change in absentee law that requires absentee ballots to be delivered by 07:30PM, TODAY Election Day.

And that there's no longer a grace period and said that is the only text messaging that went out from the state board.

>> Yes, good morning.

Rusty Jacobs, Wnc think Paul mentioned this yesterday.

The photo ID requirement us getting perhaps its biggest test.

General presidential election just wondering if you have any indication so far during Election Day and from the early voting period that it is.

It's not an impediment to higher hurdle, tuna and a tougher hurdle to navigate for voters.

>> It falls heard otherwise.

He's welcome to speak to it, but really and truly the photo ID implementation has gone very smoothly.

I think being able to communicate through our our bring it in C campaign that we were able to help inform voters.

The fact that there is the exception for in North Carolina that if someone's unable to obtain ID and they can indicate why were they have a religious objection or if they have experienced a natural disaster.

The in that and for those absentee voters that they're unable to make it copy of their photo ID.

Those are all exceptions permitted by law in North Carolina and while we've seen some use of that, it's gone smoothly and we don't we're not finding at this point.

We may learn differently as the day goes on.

There's not been a tremendous use of the exception for him because we do have a number of acceptable forms of ID and so my most will present their driver's license.

There's many options.

Military veteran ID's passport.

Many university college community college ID's are acceptable forms as well.

So we're we're hopeful that we were able to help voters be prepared when they came to vote.

Hi, good morning.

Great.

Save on WRAL.

We just wanted to ask you heard from a number of people who have experienced some issues with delays with the mail in ballots.

>> Specifically through ups, kind of to prom question for you first, what are we seeing statewide with mail-in ballot delays and many issues?

And then secondly, what is the guarantee for voters who did follow the appropriate steps that their ballots will make it in time.

Let me do check that.

We've got the same information.

Are you hearing delays through?

Ups or USPS ups for individuals who are told specifically through Wake County.

One woman was told 2 male hers through ups overnight it to make it in time.

She was told it would get there by 10, 30 this morning.

Still not there.

Obviously.

Yeah, we had the ballottrax system that allows a voter to track their mail mailed ballot is through the U.S.

Postal Service and the Intelligent Mail Bar code.

If you know we we did try to get the word out to voters that, you know, the deadline is 07:30PM, Election Day today and that they may have to take extra efforts.

But, you know, I can't speak for ups or FedEX or any of the commercial delivery services.

Generally, you know, in my experience, they will let you know whether they can deliver truly overnight or if there's some other delay.

So I would hope that they would have communicated that to the voter.

But the reality is our laws states very clearly.

Now it must be in the hands of the county board of elections by 07:30PM, Election Day.

So let's hope that the man in the brown truck gets that package to Wake County this afternoon.

Yes, the Brian Anderson with Anderson alerts, thanks for the time.

And the accessibility.

>> You said earlier that the estimate about 90% of votes tonight is what we will see.

Can you should share breakdown of?

The time frame what we see at 7.30.

We'll see you at 8.30.

We'll see you at 9.30, there.

>> And you know, 98% of the votes is pretty standard for North Carolina.

It's just good.

The timing of those being released is going to be a little different this election.

So at 07:30PM, or when the polls close, the the county boards will be able to release their absentee ballot mail ballots.

As you all I think are where we had over 240,000 ballots cast absentee by mail.

So those will be the first results that we see.

Following at that point at the close of polls, then the county boards can close their early voting tabulating tabulators and then they'll remove the flash drive and be able to upload those into there accounting software and aggregate and up and in a plate from that.

So.

You know, at that you anticipating we had over over 400 early voting sites.

So that over 400 tabulators that often have to be shut down in some of these counties.

And we had over 20 and believe in Wake County, never 30 in Mecklenburg County sites for early voting.

So it's just going to take some time.

So there will not be a precise point where we say it's tax time on the clock and all early voting result or upload it.

They're just going to be and entered in is as they are able to get the machines closed down and the tabulation taking care of.

They will you potentially be doing that as Election Day results come in and and those are going to be sporadic, too, because in order to you've got to close down your polling site and then bring those results and the ballots back to the county board of elections and it having been a county elections director, I can tell you that my my fathers most precinct.

It was on a good day at 45 minute drive to the county board of elections down a 2 lane winding Mountain Road.

So we, you know, even in even in metropolitan Wake County, we have some if our outreach in areas that it will still take time to get those and and then just regardless of what you say, regardless of what we report, there's going to be a segment of the population that is disappointed with the results tonight.

>> There's going to be a subset of that.

That will not accept the outcome and believe something was wrong or a foot.

What is your message to those people who will inevitably say something went wrong?

>> Well, I hope that everyone will have patients in knowing that you know, tonight, you know, we're going to put forward the results of at least.

4 and a half million votes that have been cast and potentially another million or more that will be cast today.

That's not instant.

And there are and we are always very clear that the results are unofficial.

>> On election night and our very, you know, con chances to are conscious and uses about explaining these processes.

We don't call results.

That's the especially on election night that's done by the media and the candidates and its North Carolina.

We're likely to have some close contests.

And so that's why tomorrow will release a report that tells everyone how many provisional ballots we need to research and that may, you know, in to help people to realize, you know, we've got a number of provisional ballots that could change the outcome of a very close election, especially when you get to a contest the size of perhaps a county commissioner race or something of that nature.

And so what I would really encourage the public to do is to be aware of what the processes are come see how we do the sample hand to eye on it.

Calm and be a part of that certification meeting where the county board staff will put in front of their county members.

This is how we got to our vote totals.

This is how those bipartisan officials in those polling places you follow chain of custody procedures and and so forth.

This is, you know, those will be the results where we show this is how many people checked in.

That's our voter history process versus how many ballots were put into the machine and those are usually exact matches or very close to exact and have good reason why they might not have been.

And so you know, I really do hope that the fact that we have bipartisan, transparent elections in North Carolina gives people the confidence.

I feel that when you have this many people turning out to the that's an indication of their confidence in our election processes.

And you will get there for the results as well.

I hope.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Helicopter from Reuters.

Thank you for the opportunity.

>> Can you speak to whether the state's election process has been impacted by the misinformation or not assist and voting.

And if so, what that looks like.

>> If the there have been a lot of questions, not only in North Carolina, but across our country about a non-citizen voting and I don't believe that it's been impactful to our processes are we have been able to address how we register individuals, the processes that we go through and 2 ensure that eligible voters are on our roles and then being very specific to remind people that when they check in to vote and individual stating their name and their address when they present themselves to vote.

We look them up into our system ensure that they are eligible, registered voter.

They present photo ID and it it that's just the process is the checks and balances that are within our system.

We have not for all the concern around it.

We have not seen any number of challenges to someone's citizenship as being part of our roles.

We have had that suggested our investigations team has checked into it.

So we you know, we feel very confident that eligible North Carolinians have been able to cast their ballot and a follow-up to that.

If you did mention that you haven't seen any significant challenges to voter rolls.

>> Can you just LeBron and ad touched on it?

But what kind of challenges have you seen to date on put her eligibility to on it?

>> Paul, you that?

I don't think we've had enough challenges to a new or even the word.

Yeah.

Yeah.

>> So there haven't been really any to speak of or very few to speak of actual challenges by voters to another voter at the polls.

And we do have a new period of time now after the election that absentee ballot challenges are allowed.

So we'll see if those arise after the election the county boards of elections do their own audit of the eligibility of their voters.

And so if they find out, for example, that a voter cast a vote and then died or a voter cast a ballot in early voting and then was convicted of a felony sentence.

They becoming eligible to vote in that election and the county boards themselves will go through challenge process when voters clearly an eligible based on official records.

And so those are really the most of the ones that we're dealing with right now.

It's just a one off here and there where a voter became ineligible after casting a vote or you know that the handful of cases where a voter got confused and, you know, when to one county versus another etc.

Just just those sort of administrative issues with making sure that the only eligible voters are casting ballots >> they were ready to go to the phone or online questions.

>> If we have one question for online 13 news now.

Please go ahead.

>> Good morning.

I was just going to ask if the early voting process would be considered.

You know, I think that's for you guys have anything that changed this year that help drive the massive turnout and has it changed the way you are at the scene that election >> well, I definitely think that we had a successful early voting period that has been the most popular voting method for North Carolinians.

For most of our major election in recent years.

And we continue to see the use of that voting method grow so we're prepared for that you know, if we've learned anything, the pandemic actually helped us to be better prepared for the large turnout of voting during the early voting period where we learned how to do social de distant scene and spacing and realize that larger facilities, more parking, more voting booths, more check-in stations that were for social distancing purposes, actually urges good logistical purposes.

And we saw a lot of the counties still have a large number of early voting sites.

These larger facilities were in use and it really has made for a very smooth process in this election.

We get we heard reports of some lines, but a lot of the counties have implemented.

Wait tracking tools.

And so the voters were able to to learn which site maybe had less of a lighter, no line and took advantage of that.

And it just overall was was an excellent process.

And I come in the county election officials for working through that and realizing, you know how to served the voters during that that early voting period.

Are there any other questions on line police press one?

If you have a question.

>> As to the van away and with the 9th Street journal, Europe.

>> Thank you so much for doing that in a military overseas and provisional ballots are going to be added to the state vote total sometime during the 10 day.

Can the period I was just wondering if you guys have any more specific date about when these numbers will be really.

>> Specific dates about the military and overseas voters.

Is that what the question and provisionals to get?

>> Of the provisional ballot.

>> The military and U.S. citizens who are living abroad.

We are able to count those ballots.

9 days following the election.

So they are those could still be considered.

And at that point in time as part of the campus process and the King and the certification meeting that the county board to hold on November 15th, the provisional ballots, the counties will assess those as they figure out how many they're dealing with and whether it requires research with the DMV to determine if someone did attempt to register.

And that just didn't process over to us since that's the way most people do register to vote is through the DMV.

So it'll be in a matter of how much research do they have to do?

Do they have a series of board meetings or do they wait until the day before the day of the certification meeting, which would be the typical time frame for most counties to hold their provisional board meetings.

Next question.

>> 2 to 4 years.

>> Peter Charla most with ABC News, Europe.

>> I >> I just wanted to ask about turnout.

Understand that the 10:00AM with the numbers aren't available yet.

But in terms of what we've seen since 07:00AM, anything kind of below average.

You mention nothing major lines at some polling places.

>> I think, you know, the reports that we have is that voting has just been steady and we had you.

Everybody gets a kick out of the fact that I talk about the weather all the time.

But weather impacts voting and we have had good weather today.

There was some fog and certain areas.

And so that may have slowed some people getting to the polls.

First thing this morning.

But I think as with the day continues and we do 10 o'clock checks and a 4 o'clock check.

We're going to find that it's been a steady day of voting.

And when you consider that we're anticipating a million to a million and a half people likely to vote today and that's dispersed to caught across more than 2600 polling places.

You're the likelihood of lines is not as great as when you have and you have over 4 million people going through the voting sites during the early voting period.

So we we fully anticipate to be able to quickly and efficiently serve those voters as they go to their election day polling places.

>> There are no more callers on line.

>> Well, I think we're good to go.

Oh, I'm sorry, okay, that I see that knowledge.

Easily.

Find.

>> This might be a bit more for the county county boards.

But I'm wondering if you could address it when everyone is used to watch on Election Day and you have someone like John King from CNN plane to a board saying, oh, we've got 50% of this county, but how will the rest of these break and sometimes different precincts in counties take longer to get to the place where they need to be count.

Could you explain how that process works?

Why it Tate?

Why it might take longer to get some votes counted in some parts of counties than others.

But that delays for.

>> So having been a county elections, director of and working as a field specialist for the county's very familiar with with these processes.

I think one thing we have to consider when a precinct might be running later than another, he did.

They have voters in line at 07:30PM, and those lines could be it 20 or 30 voters easily.

And that's not going to get processed in 5 or 10 minutes.

So you've got to allow for that.

You also, you know, it may be a newer said of workers who are to be more meticulous, aren't as familiar with the process.

And so they're following every line of the book to make sure they get it right or it may just be that someone's that, you know.

Particular anyway, even if their long-serving workers so it might also be, you know, depending on the county, depending on how many people well, they were able to put in his personnel if they don't, you know, a large group of workers, then it's going to be more work for fewer people to do so, you know, there could be any number of reasons.

No one should take that as being anything more than them upholding their oath to get it done right.

And to be accurate, I will say it probably grates on some nerves in the outside of elections world.

When you're looking.

But our job in our our effort is to not necessarily be quick.

We want to be correct.

And we want to be accurate.

And so that's what we're we're seeking when we're closing down the polls were uploading the results.

And when we're announcing those to the public.

>> I just add one other item not on.

I just want to get out to be.

>> But on Bryan.

>> Right.

Every one 0nd as want to add to to the question that, you know, the size of the county, the population, the county could really play into this as well in our large urban counties.

There's only one computer secure computer where results are going to get uploaded.

And so if you've got over 200 voting sites like Wake County does or Mecklenburg County does over 100, let go for Kelly.

Does you're going to it's going to take longer for all of those to get processed and put into the system because you have a one, a single point of entry for all that the county board office.

So so just the volume and the larger counties is gonna make a difference as well as in the rural counties that have a lot of space to cover, to bring the results back.

That's also going to take some time.

So just want to make sure everybody's aware of that.

And patient with the results coming in.

>> That's a great point.

Cole, thank you.

Okay, Brian, we have one online.

>> They went ahead and drop.

So we are no one callers on line.

>> Then we are calling this complete and we look forward to having a smooth election day.

If you have not voted yet, please do so.

Polls close at 07:30PM, tonight go to ncsbe.gov to use the voter search told to look up your voter registration information to locate your precinct polling location and to see your sample ballot.

Thank you, and have a great election day, everyone.