Thank you for volunteering to help keep our elections free and fair! This form will place you on the Granville County GOP volunteer list to serve as a Volunteer Poll Observer during the North Carolina 2025 Municipal Election. The information you provide will only be used for official Granville County election integrity business. 

Your Commitment:

The information you provide on this form is essential to prepare observer schedules and clear these schedules through the County Board of Elections.  Managing Observer assignments is complicated by state laws that limit our flexibility. It is important that you understand these limitations when you volunteer to be an Observer. Please excuse the complexity. 

All observers must be nominated in writing by the county Party chair and approved by the County Board of Elections (BOE) one day before their assigned period of duty. When you select a shift, please put it on your calendar so you don't book something over it. 

When you volunteer for a shift, we must assume that you have committed to it. We can't fill your shift with another volunteer unless you notify us at least two days in advance so we can clear the new Observer list through the County BOE. If you must change your selection after volunteering, please call our Election Integrity Coordinator, Gary Kanady, at (703) 447-5993 as soon as you realize you can't honor your commitment.  

Volunteering as a Poll Observer means that you agree to complete the simple online video Training outlined below. If you can't complete all the training before voting begins, we can still use you as an Observer if you call Gary Kanady and get a general description of your duties.   

Observer Types

State Law provides for two types of Poll Observers:
    - At-Large (Roving, who can visit any voting site at any time) and
    - Precinct-Specific (Fixed, who must be assigned to four-hour shifts at specific venues). 

We are allowed to have ten Roving Observers for the entire county. Their mobility is only limited by the state rule that you may have only three observers at a time inside a voting venue.  

We can nominate two Fixed Observers per voting venue for specific four-hour shifts. During Early Voting (EV), Fixed Observers may be assigned to either of the EV sites. On Election Day Fixed Observers may only be assigned to the precinct in which they live.

Observer Coverage

In both Early Voting and Election Day, we need to cover as much of the time as we can when the polls are open and as much of the set-up and shutdown time before and after the polls open and close (usually 30 minutes in the morning and an hour in the evening) to verify chain of custody for ballots and supporting forms.

Voting Dates and Times for the 2025 Municipal Elections

Early Voting

* 16 October - 31October. Polls are open 8:00 am. to 5:00 pm M-F
*   1 November. Polls are open 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m
Polls are closed on Sundays.

Note: Only TWO locations are open for Early Voting:

1.  Oxford Public Works: 27 Penn Avenue, Oxford, NC

2.  South Branch Library: 1550 South Campus Drive, Creedmoor, NC

Election Day

Tuesday, November 04, polls are open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. We have eight Precincts to cover for municipal elections. Precinct names and locations are available on the Granville County Board of Elections website. If you don't know your precinct, use this link to look it up: https://vt.ncsbe.gov/PPLkup/

Other Opportunities to Help with the Election (In addition to, or instead of being an observer)

Board of Elections Observers

Observe, report and monitor scheduled and intermittent BOE activities. This can be performed in conjunction with or instead of Poll Observing. Complete Section 5 below if you are interested in assisting in observing BOE activities. 

Paid Election Worker (Election Official): Email the Granville GOP at info@granvillegop.org and you will be contacted with pertinent instructions. As a paid poll worker, you will be trained by the Granville County BOE, but we recommend you also take the nonpartisan NCEIT training described in Training below because it will help you avoid the most common mistakes in administering election law.

Under 18 years of age:  Volunteer as a non-paid Student Election Official Assistant.

For either Election Official or Assistant, your contact information will be sent to the local Board of Elections. Either they or one of their election judges will contact you if they have openings. 

Training

Note: Some videos and documents are being updated for legislation changes. This process should be completed by mid-August.

The NC Election Integrity Team (NCEIT), a nonpartisan private nonprofit organization, provides online on-demand training at its website: http://www.nceit.org. If you are a new observer, select "Join" and tell them you were recommended by the Granville County Election Integrity Coordinator and you will be vetted and given access to the Member Resource section. You can then take the training at your own pace through a series of short single-subject videos. You should also watch the videos produced by the NC State Board of Elections. They are in the Public Resources section of the NCEIT home page under NC SBOE Observer Training Videos. You can complete this training in approximately an hour.

You should also complete the online training for the Statewide Election Integrity Reporting System (SEIRS), linked on the NCEIT Member Resources page or directly at https://seirs.vqventure.com/ (bottom of home page). SEIRS gives you a way to report observed or suspected election irregularities. NCEIT uses this information to document violations of the law or ambiguities in legal interpretation so they can convince legislators to clarify and strengthen the law and pursue violators through legal channels. Once you complete the SEIRS training, you will be able to report violations directly from your phone or laptop from the polling site or from home while the information is fresh in your mind.

The fact that you haven't completed all the training doesn't prevent you from serving. Having an observer in the polling place deters cheaters much like parking a police patrol car in front of a store deters thieves. Your very presence will help.

Communications

Please contact the Granville GOP Election Integrity Coordinator, Gary Kanady, at (703) 447-5993 or at eit@granvillegop.org if you have any questions or if you can't complete all the on-line training. Let him know when you complete the NCEIT training. 

We need to communicate with all Observers. We will hold periodic coordination sessions on Zoom. We will send you links for Zoom sessions when we announce them. You do not need to have the Zoom application installed on your devices if you use the link we send you. 

We will send out time-sensitive information to you via text on the Signal Private Messenger application, a secure method of communicating with end-to-end encryption for complete privacy.  For Signal, please download the application and set up an account. Notify the Coordinator and he will send you an invitation to join the Observer Text Group.

Updated 16 August 2025