The first Lake Lure returns are in. As of 8:07 p.m., with early in-person and mail-in ballots counted and Election Day votes still to come, the North Carolina State Board of Elections dashboard shows:

Mayor (vote for one)

• Carol Pritchett (incumbent, on the printed ballot): 287 (64.06%)
• Write-in votes (all names combined): 161 (35.94%)

Town Council (vote for two)

• Jim Proctor (incumbent): 291 (35.02%)
• Dave Lusk: 251 (30.20%)
• Richard Sayles: 143 (17.21%)
• Friedrich Jaeger-Faber: 138 (16.61%)
• Write-in votes: 8 (0.96%)

Counted so far: 448 votes in the mayor's race, 414 cast at early voting sites and 34 by mail. Election Day votes: not yet reported.

What the early numbers show

In the mayor's race, 161 voters skipped the only name printed on the ballot and wrote one in by hand. That's more than a third of the early vote, a lot for a town race with an unopposed incumbent. The dashboard doesn't yet say how those votes split between Kathy Tanner, John Edmonds Kozma or anyone else.

In the council race, where voters pick two, Proctor and Lusk lead. Lusk's margin over Sayles for the second seat is 108 votes, with Election Day ballots still to be added.

One small detail fits tonight's theme. Among the 34 mail ballots, write-ins took about 32%. Among the 414 ballots cast at early voting sites in the last two weeks of October, write-ins took about 36%. With so few mail ballots, that gap is too small to prove anything. But it points the way you'd expect if some mail voters potentially filled out their ballots before every challenger was in the race.

These are unofficial and early, and the ballots behind them weren't cast today. Many were sealed in envelopes back when the leaves were still green. Here's why that matters.

Meet the time-capsule voters

North Carolina was the first state in the country to start voting in the 2026 midterm. County boards began mailing absentee ballots on September 4. In-person early voting ran from October 15 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 31.

That calendar creates something worth noticing in Lake Lure's mayoral race. Kathy Tanner told The Digital Courier she decided to run as a write-in candidate in mid-September — after absentee ballots were already in voters' mailboxes. John Edmonds Kozma announced his write-in bid over the summer. Mayor Pritchett had filed with no opposition in July. So a resident who filled out a mail ballot in the first days of September may have done so before one of tonight's three mayoral candidates had even entered the race.

The same goes for the news. The October 1 candidate forum at Bills Creek Community Center, the public debate over the Lured Market dispute, and last week's reporting on Firefly Cove all landed after some ballots were already sealed. Early votes are a snapshot of what people knew on the day they voted — not tonight.

Why mail ballots show up first

North Carolina has a specific order for election night. Mail-in absentee ballots that arrived before Election Day can be tabulated before the polls close, so they're usually the first numbers to appear for any county. Under a 2023 state law (Session Law 2023-140), counties can't start tallying in-person early votes until 7:30 p.m., and the State Board has said that can take 30 to 60 minutes or longer. Election Day precinct results follow, typically between about 8:30 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Mail voting has been sliding. Statewide, absentee-by-mail voting this year was down about 34% compared with the last midterm, according to WFAE. Lake Lure shows the same pattern: mail ballots make up just 34 of the 448 votes counted so far in the mayor's race. Nearly everyone who voted before Election Day did it in person.

The write-in wrinkle

This year's mayoral race has a twist most Lake Lure voters haven't seen before: two write-in challengers. Rutherford County Elections Director Dawn Lovelace told WCAB News that Lake Lure and Rutherfordton, where Mayor Jimmy Dancy faces write-in challenger Clark Poole, are the two races she expects could stay unsettled while write-ins are reviewed. Her office has to compile the write-in data and check that each written-in name belongs to an eligible candidate, including whether that person lives in the town, she said.

North Carolina handles municipal write-ins differently from most other offices. The usual requirement to file a declaration and petitions under G.S. 163-123 doesn't apply to municipal elections, though the legal qualifications to hold office still do. And under state law and State Board guidance, a misspelled or incomplete name still counts if officials can tell who the voter meant. One catch: in a vote-for-one race, a voter who filled in Mayor Pritchett's oval and also wrote in another name has overvoted, and neither choice counts in that race. The rest of that ballot still counts.

Write-in ballots are counted at the county elections office under the supervision of the bipartisan county board, and the totals are recorded on a tally sheet signed by board members.

That means tonight's "write-in" number tells you how many voters chose someone other than the name printed on the ballot. It does not yet tell you which one.

How we got here: a short history of voting early

For most of American history, you voted in person, on Election Day, or you didn't vote. That has flipped.

• In 1996, about 89% of American voters cast ballots in person on Election Day. Just 8% voted by mail and 3% voted early in person (Census data analyzed by MIT's Election Data & Science Lab).
• By 2024, the picture had turned upside down: roughly 29% voted by mail, 31% voted early in person, and only about 40% showed up on Election Day. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission put the combined early and mail share at 65.5% of all votes.
• North Carolina got here early. Absentee voting by mail first came in 1977, but only for voters who were disabled or would be out of state. In 1999 the General Assembly opened absentee voting to any voter and created "one-stop" sites — what most of us call early voting. In its first run, in fall 2000, 393,152 North Carolinians used it. By 2001 it applied to all elections, not just even-year general elections.
• Today it's the default here. Early voting has made up more than half of all ballots in each of North Carolina's last five general elections. The State Board's executive director said 74% of North Carolina voters cast ballots early in 2024. This fall, more than 1.77 million North Carolinians had voted early by October 27 — about 37% ahead of the same point in 2022.

The case for, and the case against

Early voting has real fans and real critics, and both have a point.

What supporters say: It's convenient. You get a choice of days, including a Saturday, and any early voting site in your county instead of only your assigned precinct. That matters in a mountain town where people work weekends in tourist season, travel, or care for family. It spreads out the crowd and shortens Election Day lines. And mail ballots are rarely tossed: the EAC found only 1.2% of mail ballots were rejected nationally in 2024.

What critics say: An early ballot can't be taken back. If something important comes out in the final weeks — a forum answer, a lawsuit, a news story — early voters have already locked in. Running a weeks-long voting period costs counties more staff and sites. Mail ballots take longer to verify and can be challenged. And some voters simply believe there's value in a community voting together on one day, on the same information.

Public opinion is split, too. A Pew Research Center survey from August 2025 found 58% of Americans support letting any voter cast a ballot by mail, with support differing sharply by party.

What to watch for next

• Election Day precinct results are the last batch still to come tonight.
• Nothing is final tonight. Write-in votes, provisional ballots and some absentee ballots get further review first. Rutherford County's canvass, where results become official, is at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13, and it's open to the public. As Lovelace put it to WCAB News: "They are not final results until Canvass."

We'll update this story as numbers come in. Last updated 8:07 p.m.

Sources

• NC State Board of Elections: voter dates and deadlines
• How North Carolina counts votes and reports results (ABC11 / NCSBE)
• WFAE: absentee voting down this cycle
• WLOS: 1.77 million early ballots by Oct. 27
• UNC School of Government: early voting in North Carolina
• Statista / MIT Election Data & Science Lab: modes of voting
• The Digital Courier: Kathy Tanner's write-in campaign

Last updated: 2026-11-03