How Cary and Wake County Voted

Polls closed at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, and Cary voters decided the three amendments on their ballot plus two Wake County bond questions. Here is what happened.

Turnout was heavy before Election Day even arrived. Wake County finished early voting with 326,679 ballots cast, which is 128 percent of the county’s entire early vote in 2022. Statewide, 2,807,434 ballots were accepted, up 30.4 percent from the same point in 2022.

The night’s biggest race was called early. Roy Cooper, the former governor, beat Michael Whatley for the U.S. Senate seat that Thom Tillis is leaving, and the Associated Press called it at 8:24 PM, less than an hour after the polls closed. Cooper has never lost an election, through the state legislature, four terms as attorney general, and two terms as governor. He is the first Democrat North Carolina has sent to the U.S. Senate since Kay Hagan won in 2008.

Voter photo ID amendment: APPROVED, 60 percent. Photo ID for voting in person has been in the state constitution since 2018. This amendment extends the requirement to voting by mail, where showing ID means including a photocopy of it in the ballot envelope, or filling out an exception form. That rule existed before as a regular state law. It now sits in the constitution too, so a future legislature cannot change it on its own.

Income Tax Cap Amendment: APPROVED, 62 percent. This amendment does not lower anyone’s tax. The state income tax rate is already set to fall from 3.99 percent to 3.49 percent in 2027. What the amendment does is cap future increases at 3.5 percent, so the rate cannot climb back above that line.

Property tax limits amendment: APPROVED, 60 percent. The amendment does not set a number itself. It orders the state legislature to pass laws that limit how much local governments can raise property taxes, so any cap on what Cary or Wake County can collect gets written later in Raleigh.

Wake County read the ballot differently than the state did. Voters here rejected the photo ID amendment, 53 percent against, even as it passed statewide. On the two tax amendments the county said yes, but only barely: 51.2 percent for the income tax cap and 51.3 percent for the property tax limits.

There were also two Wake County bonds, separate from the amendments. The school bond, $680 million for the Wake County Public School System, PASSED with 63 percent. The Wake Tech bond, $149.1 million for Wake Technical Community College, PASSED with 63 percent. Together, the two questions totaled $829.1 million. For a $500,000 house, the two bonds together would add up to about $25 more a year, or about $2 extra a month, in taxes.

Additional reading: The Cary Report voter guide