Voters in Spring Lake will have to drive to Fayetteville to find their nearest early voting locations in this year’s primary election, as the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted on Tuesday against opening a voting site in the northwest Cumberland County town.
The board voted 3-2, with its three Republican members voting against the Spring Lake site, and the two Democrats voting for it. This echoed a 3-2 Republican to Democrat decision on December 9 by the Cumberland County Board of Elections. Under state law, the state board makes the final decision on early voting locations when a county elections board fails to reach a unanimous decision. The state board took up early voting matters in 12 counties on Tuesday.
Spring Lake had an estimated 11,530 residents in 2024, and state elections data shows 5,552 registered voters in the town limit as of this month.
Spring Lake Mayor Kia Anthony criticized the decision.
“It’s unfortunate but, expected,” she told CityView via text message on Tuesday. “Access to the ballot should expand, not shrink. Spring Lake has been a one-stop early voting location in past primaries, and our residents deserve that same fair, convenient access in 2026.”
Spring Lake has had an early voting site twice: Once for the 2024 primary and then again for the 2024 general election.
Linda Devore, the Republican chair of the Cumberland County Board of Elections, argued against operating a Spring Lake site for the 2026 primary. The county budgeted for seven early voting sites this year, she said, and relatively few voters used the Spring Lake site in the 2024 primary compared to the county’s other locations, when eight operated.
The site in the Spring Lake Multipurpose Community Center, located at 245 Ruth St., drew 514 voters across 15 days of early voting, according to the county elections board.
“That would average out to around 3.3 voters per hour, at a cost to taxpayers of $68 per ballot,” Devore said. “It’s by far the least utilized of all the sites we’ve ever utilized in Cumberland County.”
In 2024, the other seven locations attracted between 1,212 and 3,864 voters, county elections board data said. Overall, 13,873 people voted early in the March 2024 primaries.
Spring Lake should have a voting site, Irene Grimes—a Democrat on the county elections board—told the state board. The town has repeatedly requested a site, she said, and it is relatively isolated from Fayetteville and the rest of the county as it is surrounded by the county line, Fort Bragg and a state park.
The most popular early voting site is at Cliffdale Recreation Center on Cliffdale Road. The Spring Lake site could relieve some of the pressure there, as the Cliffdale site is busy with its recreation programs going on at the same time as voting.
“And I think when we start reducing people and voting to statistics and dollars and numbers, we’re just not doing them justice. We’re just not,” Grimes said. “I don’t think it matters whether one side has 1,500 voters and the other one has 500, because I don’t want to be the one to be standing in front of those 500 and tell them why they didn’t get to go vote at their site. I just don’t.”
Grimes asked the state board to approve the Democratic early voting proposal, which would have kept the site in Spring Lake open and instead shuttered the site at the Kiwanis Recreation Center in Honeycutt Park on Devers Street.
In the March 2024 primary, the Kiwanis site was the third most popular of the eight locations, drawing 1,730 votes in 15 days. Devore said one reason it is important to have this site is that it is next to Fayetteville Technical Community College and its 10,000 full-time students.
Early Voting Sites, Dates and Hours
With the state elections board decision, these are the early voting locations for the March 2026 primary:
• Kiwanis Recreation Center
• Cliffdale Recreation Center
• College Lakes Recreation Center
• East Regional Library
• J.D. Pone Recreation Center
• Smith Recreation Center
• Stoney Point Recreation Center
Early voting starts February 12 and ends February 28, ahead of Election Day on March 3. The hours will be 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. weekdays. The sites will also open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on two Saturdays—February 14 and February 28. There will be Sunday voting from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on February 15.
The Spring Lake site was also used in the November 2024 election. It was the least-used of eight early voting sites for that election, drawing 3,754 out of the county’s 98,715 early voters. Decisions will be made later this year on which locations will be used for early voting in this November’s general election.