November mail-in voting starts in North Carolina with roughly 600k requested ballots sent to voters

Mail-in voting for the presidential election begins Friday in North Carolina when the state sends over 600,000 requested ballots to voters.

The large number of requests are in response to the coronavirus pandemic that has kept many Americans from going to public places in which a large number of people gather, like polling stations, and is similar to the increased demand in other states.

The 618,000 ballots requested in the initial wave in battleground North Carolina is roughly 16 times the number that the state sent out for the 2016 election. And the requests came overwhelmingly from Democratic and independent voters, the Associated Press reports.

Ballots will go out in two weeks in other battleground states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In the 2016 election cycle, just one-quarter of the electorate cast votes through the mail. In 2020, elections officials expect the majority of voters to do so, the wire service also reports.