Wake County approves record 18-site early voting plan for 2026 midterms
Wake County will open 18 early voting sites for the 2026 midterms, with three larger locations and countywide voting available from Oct. 15 through Oct. 31.
Wake County voters will have 18 places to cast an early ballot for the 2026 midterms, with sites spread across Raleigh, Cary, Apex, Garner, Wake Forest and other parts of the county. The county board’s unanimous vote gives Wake its largest early-voting footprint for a midterm election, a move aimed at keeping lines down and making it easier to vote before Election Day.
The early voting window for the November 2026 general election will run from Thursday, Oct. 15, through 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31. Under North Carolina rules, voters may cast a ballot at any early voting site in their county, and eligible voters may register and vote at the same time during the early voting period. That means a voter who cannot make a neighborhood site near home can still choose a location closer to work, school or another daily route.
Three of Wake’s early voting sites will be more than 10,000 square feet, a detail that matters in a county where crowding has become a recurring issue during heavy turnout periods. With more than 850,000 registered voters in 2024, up from 794,494 in 2020, Wake’s election administrators are managing a much larger electorate than they were four years ago. The expanded space should help absorb traffic at the busiest times and reduce the bottlenecks that often build late in the day and near the end of the early-voting period.
Wake County also will offer curbside voting at every early voting site for voters who cannot enter the enclosure because of age or physical disability. Voters will be asked to present acceptable photo ID when voting in person, but anyone without one can obtain a county-issued ID from the board of elections through the end of early voting. On Election Day, voters without ID may still use a reasonable-impediment affidavit.
The county’s action comes as state election officials are already laying out the 2026 calendar, which opens Sept. 4 with absentee ballots, moves into early voting Oct. 15, and ends with Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3. It also lands while North Carolina Republican lawmakers are pushing proposals to shorten early in-person voting and eliminate a statewide Sunday voting day, making local access decisions in Wake more politically charged than a routine administrative vote. In 2024, Wake County operated 22 early voting sites in the general election, then described as the county’s highest number ever offered.
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