In the past, I know a lot of people have wanted to see, ahead of time, a ballot that is the sample of the ballot that they will see when they go to the polls on election day. (Or when they go to an early-voting site.) Before now, the answer was that you couldn't see any such thing. The best you could do was to look at a list of all the candidates running anywhere in your county and piece together which district races were going to be on your own ballot. Or go by the BoE office and look at one.

But that just changed. The State Board of Elections now has a feature on its website that will show you your sample ballot in the upcoming election. You fill a field with your first and last name, then copy a security code designed to keep bots off the site, then click submit, and you will get a statement telling whether you are eligible to vote. You can then click "My Sample Ballot," and it will show you a PDF of the ballot that has all the races, and only the races, you are eligible to vote in.

http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/VoterLookup.aspx?Feature=eligibility

If your name is "John Smith, however, the system is bit more awkward.  In that case you will get a screen full of John Smiths, in alphabetical order according to middle name. Unfortunately, there's no room on the screen for all the John Smiths, so your search stops in the middle of the John D. Smiths, and there's apparently no way to extend the search and get the rest of the list. Not good for John M. Smith. In that case, you should go back to the search screen, and click the second radio button that says "Show me my voter information." That will give you a search screen that calls for your first and last name, plus your date of birth. That should narrow the choices to only one screen, even for the John Smiths.