OP Editors's blog

In addition to mailing in your vote-by-mail ballot or returning it to the Orange County Board Elections office in Hillsborough, you can return your mail-in-ballot at ANY early voting location in Orange County.

The Board of Elections will have dedicated staff and separate lines to receive in-person returns of mail-in-ballots. They will also have extra staff to direct voters inside the polling place in an attempt to minimize people getting in the wrong lines.

Those voting by mail should FOLLOW the INSTRUCTIONS on the return envelope— the voter must sign and the witness must print their name, address and then sign. Missing witness info is the #1 deficiency on mail-in ballots.

Mail-in ballots can’t be returned to Election Day precinct polling places though.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School system (CHCCS) will create a task force to decide how the district wants to address the issue of school safety, and whether School Resource Officers (SROs) and security guards should play a part.

Meeting July 23, the Board of Education voted unanimously to create the task force after hearing staff presentations and receiving a surge of emails from community members with both positive and negative views of keeping SROs in schools.

SROs are members of local police departments who work in the schools based on a contract with the school district, and are funded by the Orange County Board of Commissioners. The contract is currently lapsed and with CHCCS going virtual for the first 9 weeks of the year, the district has some time to consider whether it wants to renew existing arrangement with the police departments. In contrast, security guards are hired by the district as CHCCS employees.