Provisional and Absentee Data

Both provisional and absentee by-mail ballots are processed and fed into a tabulator during board meetings held by county boards of elections. Note: Also included in the data are absentee ballots that are cast in person during the early voting period.

In 2019, the General Assembly, in Session Law 2019-239, amended subsection (c) of N.C.G.S. § 163-228 to make the absentee request register confidential and not a public record until Election Day. As a result, detailed absentee mail-in ballot information is no longer reported until the ballot is returned or until polls open on Election Day.

Beginning with the 2020 general election, you may view absentee ballot request counts using the Absentee Request Demographic Stats files (see, e.g., the 2020 general election file absentee_demo_stats_20201103.csv). You may also now view daily absentee request reports in the Press folder on our FTP site.  

The statewide and county absentee files are available/updated in three stages:

Stage 1: The absentee file becomes available on our website on the first day that mail-in ballots are sent to voters. After mail-in ballots start going out to voters, absentee files are refreshed daily and include data for returned/processed mail-in ballots from the day before. Detailed absentee mail-in ballot information is not made publicly available until ballots are returned or polls open on Election Day. 

Stage 2: Between the start of one-stop early voting and Election Day, data for ballots cast via one-stop early voting are added to the absentee files the day after being cast.

Stage 3: On and after Election Day, data for all requested and cast mail-in and one-stop ballots are included in the file. This includes detailed data for mail-in ballots that have not been returned.

These files contain ballot-level absentee request and voting data for each election, at the statewide or county level.

What's included? 

• One row of data per ballot (requested and/or cast)
• Ballot information for absentee by-mail ballots includes request date, send date, return date, return status (e.g., ACCEPTED, SPOILED, etc.), and mailing address.
• Ballot information for one-stop early voting ballots includes voting date (called return date), early voting site, and same-day registration information.
• Voter information includes name, demographics (e.g., party, gender, race), mailing address, precinct, and district.
• For full list of variables included, see layout_absentee.txt

What's not included? 

• Detailed absentee mail-in ballot information remains confidential (and is not reported) until the ballot is returned or until polls open on Election Day; see the Absentee Request Stats file for aggregated absentee request counts.
• Election results/ballot item choices are not included; see Historical Election Results for these data.

These files contain group-level ballot counts for each election (includes both absentee by-mail ballots and one-stop early voting).

What's included in absentee counts by county? 

• Ballot count (number of absentee ballots cast) aggregated by county and  ballot request type ('MAIL' or 'ONE-STOP'), as well as voter party, voter gender, and voter race
• For full list of variables included, see layout_absentee_counts_state.txt or layout_absentee_counts_county.txt

What's included in absentee counts statewide? 

• Ballot count (number of absentee ballots cast) aggregated by ballot request type ('MAIL' or 'ONE-STOP'), as well as voter party, voter gender, and voter race
• For full list of variables included, see layout_absentee_counts_state.txt

What's not included in either file? 

• Individual-level voter information (name, mailing address, etc.) is not included; see absentee files for these data.

In North Carolina, when you vote early at a one-stop site, you are voting an absentee ballot. By law in North Carolina, early voting is considered “absentee in person,” as you voted “absent” of Election Day. Several weeks after the election, your county board of elections will assign this vote to your “Voter History.”

For the purposes of matching voters:

• When joining files that were created at different points in time, we recommend joining the files via “ncid”; for example, when joining an absentee file with a voter history file or a voter registration file, we recommend matching on “ncid”
• When joining files that were created around the same point in time, we recommend joining the files via voter registration number and county; for example, when joining an absentee file with a voter registration snapshot file, we recommend matching on voter registration number ("voter_reg_num") and county.