Get out and vote!

The November General Election is less than a week away, but you don’t have to wait until Nov. 2 to cast your vote.

Already some 13,000 of Brunswick County’s 77,393 registered voters have headed to the polls to cast early votes. Those voters join about 450,000 across North Carolina who have already headed to the polls.

Voting is an important right of every American and it’s exciting to see so many people already excited about casting their votes. We hope this trend continues all the way through Election Day.

If you want to vote early, you have between now and Saturday, Oct. 30, to go to several early voting locations in Brunswick County. See page 7A for a complete list of locations.

If you miss your chance to vote early, be sure to head to the polls Tuesday. This is one place we get excited about seeing lines of people waiting. We hope there are lines at all of our polling stations and that people will be patient and wait for a turn to vote.

If you haven’t decided whom you want to vote for, you can rely on The Brunswick Beacon to give you all of the information you need. If you visit www.brunswickbeacon.com you’ll find all of the pre-election stories we’ve written about races that affect readers in our coverage area.

We also have candidate profiles on our website. You can access them by clicking on the Political Races banner ad at the top of the Beacon’s website or you can go to it directly by entering http://ads.lcni6.com/politics/048/home/index.html in your Internet browser.

An informed vote is the best vote, so be sure to study all of the candidates before you head out. You can also find a sample ballot on the Brunswick County Board of Elections website at http://www.brunswickcountync.gov/Departments/BoardofElections/2010Sample....

Do your part. Join others who have already gone to the polls. Let’s make this year’s turnout among the highest this community has seen in years.