The 2026 elections are underway, and even though Election Day itself is still nearly two months away, the first votes in the race have already been cast.

Tens of thousands of North Carolinians start receiving mail-in ballots this week. The state began mailing them Friday to the nearly 50,000 people who have already requested them and will continue doing so for weeks to come as more requests come in. The final deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 20.

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Also, Friday the state opened the online portal that military and overseas voters can use to vote. At least nine voters cast their ballots before the end of the day Friday, according to election officials.

In the 2024 elections, about 300,000 North Carolinians voted by mail, a relatively small portion of the 5.7 million who voted statewide — but still a significant number in a state where statewide elections sometimes come down to just a couple hundred votes.

And with uncertainty swirling around mail-in voting this year due to changing rules at the state level, and federal lawsuits, people may have questions about how to make sure their ballots will count if they vote by mail.

“North Carolinians who want to vote by mail: Pay attention to the latest guidance and give yourself plenty of time to get your vote in,” Gov. Josh Stein wrote Friday, as he decried new state-level rules that will make it more likely that people’s ballots could be thrown out this year.

Here are some key facts to know if you plan to vote by mail.

Request a ballot online, in person or by mail. Voters have multiple options to request a mail-in ballot. They can do so online, or by filling out a request form and submitting it either by mail or in person at their county’s board of elections office.

Anyone can vote by mail. Unlike some states that require an excuse, North Carolina allows anyone to vote by mail. However, the vast majority of voters cast their ballots in person, not by mail.

Important deadlines. The final day to request a mail-in ballot is Oct. 20 at 5 p.m. However, officials are advising people not to wait until the last minute to request a ballot if they plan to vote by mail. Under a 2023 change to state law, ballots not received by Election Day will be thrown in the trash, even if they were mailed well in advance. 

Limits on who can help. Voters should be careful when requesting ballots for other people, or when getting help filling out or returning their own ballot. Most of the time, the only people who can help are someone’s “close relatives.” That rule doesn’t apply for disabled people. But for everyone else, a close relative is defined as your spouse, brother, sister, parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, mother-in-law, father-in-law, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, stepparent, or stepchild.

Track your ballot’s progress. You can follow your ballot through the mail, and the full counting process, using an app North Carolina has partnered with called BallotTrax. It can give voters peace of mind that their ballot wasn’t lost in the mail — or allow them the knowledge to go try and vote a different way, if it does look like the ballot wasn’t delivered.

You don’t have to mail your mail-in ballot. There are other options for people who don’t trust the mail — or who don’t have $1.98 worth of stamps, or who might be worried that mail services won’t deliver their ballot by the Nov. 3 deadline. You can hand-deliver your filled-in ballot two ways: At your county's early-voting locations during the early voting period from Oct. 15-31, or at your county elections office. Just make sure to do so before polls close at 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.

If you request a mail-in ballot, you don’t have to use it. Every year thousands of people request mail-in ballots but end up either not voting, or voting in person instead. You can request and receive a mail-in ballot but then go vote during early voting or on Election Day instead. There’s no further steps needed to cancel your mail-in ballot. It will be automatically canceled once you vote some other way.

But don’t vote twice. The rules over mail-in voting can confuse some people — including President Donald Trump, who gave North Carolina voters faulty instructions in 2020 that could’ve led to voter fraud charges for anyone who did what he said. Trump told his supporters who had already voted by mail to go vote a second time, in person, to test the system’s ability to catch possible fraud. Voting twice is illegal, the State Board of Elections chimed in to tell voters at the time. It’s also a felony under North Carolina law to induce someone to vote twice, although Trump was never charged for his comments that appeared to do so. At the time, NPR reported, Facebook blocked people from sharing videos of Trump’s comments due to voter fraud concerns.

More questions? The State Board of Elections has plenty of information about voting in general, including mail-in voting specifically and a detailed FAQ, on its website. It also published a how-to video on Friday on voting by mail.