What to know about early voting in Georgia and North Carolina

Two critical battleground states – Georgia and North Carolina – are kicking off early in-person voting this week.

Between a flurry of legislative changes and the fallout from Hurricane Helene, the experience could look different for many voters heading to the polls in the coming weeks.

In Georgia, voters can head to the ballot box beginning on Tuesday and in North Carolina, early in-person voting begins on Thursday. Here are a handful of things to know about how voting and elections will work in two key swing states.

Fewer drop boxes but more ways to vote early

New state laws after 2020 that tightened rules for absentee ballots and cracked down on the availability of drop boxes may make the option less appealing than early in-person voting, election experts said.

While many drop boxes were available 24/7 in 2020, this year there will be fewer of them, and they will be in election offices or early vote locations with hours that tend to mimic normal business hours.

“The drop boxes have really been made so inconvenient to use that fewer voters are able to utilize them,” said Kristin Nabers, the Georgia state director for All Voting is Local. “I don’t want to discourage people from using drop boxes by any means, but I can see why people would think it’s easier to show up in person.”

Meanwhile, the opportunities to vote early in-person have expanded: Georgia law mandates two Saturdays of early voting and allows for two Sundays of early voting if a county desires.

Limits on feeding people in line

A 2021 law that makes it a crime to offer food or drinks to voters waiting to cast a ballot – which was highly publicized by news outlets and immortalized by comedian Larry David in episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” – mostly survived legal challenges. So, offering a bottle of water or a snack to voters within 150 feet of a building where ballots are being cast is still banned.

The law also sought to ban offers of food or beverages within 25 feet of a voter standing in line, even if it was well beyond 150 feet of the building where ballots were being cast. A judge paused that provision, allowing voting rights groups to offer so-called line relief to voters that may find themselves waiting in particularly long lines.

Hoping to speed up results but worries about uncertainty

The Peach State made several changes to try to get voters faster election results. At 8 p.m. ET on election night, counties are required to report results from their early in-person and absentee ballots. As counties tabulate the Election Day vote, they’ll provide updates at regular interviews. The goal, according to Georgia’s secretary of state, is to provide speedy, fair and transparent results.

At the same time, several new rules passed by a Donald Trump-backed Republican majority on the Georgia State Election Board are creating uncertainty around the post-election process. The board passed a rule requiring a hand count of the number of ballots at each voting location, which could potentially delay the reporting of results.

The board also passed rules allowing county officials to examine extensive election materials prior to certifying and requiring those officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before they certify results.

There are ongoing lawsuits related to all the new rules, which Democrats and voting rights activists worry could be exploited by county-level officials who want to try to challenge election results or delay the certification process.

Impact of Hurricane Helene damage

Officials in North Carolina have been scrambling in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene to ensure residents are still able to cast a ballot.

“I think there will be a drop off, it’s hard to really predict how much,” Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina said of the storm’s impact on turnout. “But I’m encouraged so far by the response the State Board of Elections has done to educate folks on what to do and how to vote.”

The North Carolina State Board of Elections website has updates about relocated polling places, how constituents can vote if they lost their identification in the storm and how displaced voters can request new absentee ballots.

When it comes to early voting sites, the 25 western counties most impacted by Helene had planned for 80 early voting sites. Seventy-five of them will be operational when early voting begins. “This is absolutely outstanding that our county boards of elections have pulled this off in western North Carolina given the devastation and destruction left by Helene,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director for the state Board of Elections said in a briefing last week.

State officials are also still working to secure everything from generators to portable bathrooms to open as many polling locations as possible on November 5, Brinson Bell said.

No more grace period for mail ballots

Voters considering casting a ballot by mail should note that, unlike 2020, their ballots need to be received by 7:30 p.m. ET on Election Day.

During the last presidential race, there was a three-day grace period for ballots to arrive, which has since been eliminated.

New voter ID rules

This is the first presidential election where residents of the Tar Heel State will be required to present identification when they show up to vote. Acceptable forms of ID include a driver’s license, passport and student photo IDs that have been approved by the state election board.

There are exceptions if a voter is unable to provide identification and one of those exceptions is a natural disaster. In that case, voters fill out an ID exception form that accompanies their ballot. The state election board notes that county election boards are required to count provisional ballots that include ID exception forms.

Both Georgia and North Carolina prohibit photographing ballots.

“In this day and age, everyone’s taking selfies, even people in the boomer generation like me,” Phillips from Common Cause North Carolina said. “But there definitely is a law that says no selfies.”

Phillips noted that voters are still able to take their phones into a polling place if they want to look up information about who they’re voting for. That’s not the case in every state.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.