ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828NewsNow.com) — The North Carolina State Board of Elections announced at 5:30 p.m. on Election Day that voting results will be delayed by 45 minutes.

The Board posted on social media that after a meeting in an emergency session, it voted to grant a 45-minute voting extension at the Tabor City Courthouse in Columbus County and shorter extensions in Lenoir, Wilson, and Hertford counties.

“Due to the extended voting times at these locations, website posting of statewide results will be delayed by 45 minutes,” the Board said.

In Buncombe County, which had nearly 97,000 participate in early voting, the total number of voters for the midterm election surpassed 118,000.

The county said in a news release that as of 4 p.m., 21,566 voters have turned out for Election Day. That puts the total number of votes cast so far for the midterms at 118,404. Pole Creek Baptist Church is still leading with the highest voter turnout with 539 people, followed by Pisgah Elementary School with 517 voters.

Earlier in the day, poll workers in the Northern part of the county at West Buncombe Elementary School and at Erwin High School told 828NewsNow that they were seeing a slow, steady trickle of voters. Each polling site is staffed by a bipartisan leadership team consisting of one chief judge and two party-judges, along with additional trained poll workers.

At Erwin High, Melissa Taylor was one of the judges and said everything had been running smoothly.

“There’ve been no issues and no problems. It’s been pretty smooth so far,” she said.

Like all the other sites in the county, Erwin High’s polling site started up at 6:30 a.m.

“We’ve seen a pretty steady flow of voters ever since we started early this morning,” Taylor said.

Taylor, who has been working at polling sites for over 20 years, also said the voting machines have been working properly.

“The machines have been very sensitive. If voters are marking outside their bubble, the machines are kicking them back and asking them if they want to cast the vote as it is or redo it,” she said.

The county said it will release two more voting totals during the day at 2:30 p.m. and then again at 4:30 p.m. before releasing the total number of voters later in the night.