NC Political News Briefs

North Carolina agencies are moving forward with the opening of absentee voting, a coastal resilience funding round and the environmental review of a proposed data center.

Absentee voting begins Friday

North Carolina’s 100 county boards of elections will begin sending absentee-by-mail ballots Friday to voters who have requested them, marking the start of voting in the 2026 general election. Any registered voter may request an absentee ballot, and the request deadline is 5 p.m. Oct. 20. Completed civilian absentee ballots must reach the voter’s county board by 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3. State election officials said returning a ballot through the U.S. Postal Service now costs $1.98, equivalent to three Forever stamps. In-person early voting runs Oct. 15-31.

State opens $2.5 million coastal resilience funding round

The N.C. Division of Coastal Management is accepting applications for approximately $2.5 million through the third and fourth phases of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program. Eligible applicants include counties, municipalities and federally or state-recognized tribes in North Carolina’s 20 Coastal Area Management Act counties that have completed the program’s planning phases or an equivalent process. Funding may support project engineering, design, permitting or construction. Applications are due Nov. 10.

DEQ schedules hearing on Compass Data Center water impacts

The N.C. Division of Water Resources will hold a public hearing Sept. 28 on a Clean Water Act Section 401 water-quality certification application for the proposed Stamey Farm Road/Compass Data Center in Iredell County. The project includes five single-story data center buildings and an on-site substation. Its application proposes permanent impacts to 438 linear feet of jurisdictional streams, 0.13 acres of wetlands and 7.36 acres of open waters. Written comments will be accepted through Oct. 28