Did you know that North Carolina publishes data on every vote cast – the who, where and how, even the age and home address of the voter? This year, a single vote caught the eye of NC Rabbit Hole journalist Jeremy Markovich: Who was voting from Antarctica?

NC Local caught up with Markovich to talk about this particular rabbit hole and what he learned in his search for the southernmost voter, Mitchell Huff.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity. 

NC Local: You wrote a story about a North Carolina man who voted from Antarctica. How did you find him? 

Markovich: It wasn’t hard to just do a search [in the absentee voter records] for Antarctica and find this person’s name, age, address. [The state] has information about when they requested the ballot, when they got the ballot and then when the ballot was returned. So you have all this kind of information. And even though it’s public record, I don’t really feel like, “Oh, we should just name this person.” 

So the thing that was challenging here is that Antarctica is a notoriously hard place to reach. You just can’t call down there. 

NC Local: In your article, you shared a lot about the reporting process, which ultimately led you to Huff’s father. Why did you want to share that process? 

Markovich: To me, it’s much more interesting because I think it shows a) how the sausage is made, but then b) I think that there is some care in making sure that we’re trying to figure out what’s actually going on beyond a few bits of information.

[After what he characterized as “a couple of dead ends,” Markovich found Huff’s father’s place of employment in Asheville and contacted him at work. His father confirmed that Huff had voted by mail from Antarctica.] 

NC Local: So what’s Huff’s story? 

Markovich: His name is Mitchell Huff. He’s 31. He is from Candler, just outside of Asheville. His dad says he’s been an adventurous guy for his whole life. He took flying lessons when he was a teenager. He always was looking for excitement and was a truck driver for a while. He worked at the Asheville airport at the jet center handling fuel out there. 

For the last three summers – which basically lines up with our winter, he has gone [to Antartica] for months and has been the fuel lead, which means you move fuel around McMurdo Station. If they need jet fuel out on the ice runway, that’s on the ice, where the big planes land, he goes and does that. 

NC Local: The North Carolina State Board of Elections posts a list online of all voters who cast an absentee ballot. What voting information is public and what isn’t?

Markovich: When it comes to the Board of Elections, if you have a name, you can pretty much see every election somebody has ever voted in…You can figure out what primaries people have voted in … whether they vote on Election Day or early.

There’s some [public records] that your address is part of. So they can figure out what address you were voting from. You can figure out other things like where your polling place is, what your sample ballot is. It is honestly meant for [a voter] to be able to use it to figure out, “OK, what’s my ballot look like? What decisions do I have to make? Who am I going to vote for? What local or state initiatives are on my ballot?”

A lot of it is public record, but the one thing that is not is who you voted for. You can keep that to yourself, but the fact of whether or not you actually voted is out there.

NC Local: Who can vote online?

Markovich: Overseas voters only, with a few small exceptions for people with disabilities, I will say. But generally, it’s for overseas voters only.

If you register, if you jump through the requisite hoops … You have to make sure you do it in the right way and apply… You can actually just print out a ballot, sign it, take a picture of it and email it back or – and this is mostly how people do it – there’s like an online portal. You can vote from your cell phone if you are not in the United States. 

[Buncombe County Board of Elections confirmed to Markovich that Huff voted electronically.]

NC Local: This article really highlighted how important it is to make a voting plan early. 

Markovich: Yeah, this guy figured out that you need to apply and everything long before trying to get an absentee ballot and realizing that the mail was going to be too slow. [Huff] applied to vote in June. He knew he was going to be overseas. This is the first time that he’s done this. He’s been there for three Arctic summers; last time he actually voted before he left.

NC Local: One of my favorite turns down the Rabbit Hole in your piece is when you get into the nitty gritty of how mail works in Antarctica. Can you share what you learned? 

Markovich: There’s a post office at the South Pole. And it’s like an Army post office. So it’s kind of like a military style mail system. So you can mail something like you can buy stamps down there in Antarctica. 

It takes like two or three weeks at minimum for a letter to make it back and forth. A package takes longer. 

[Markovich found that if an absentee ballot was sent out to Antarctica on the first day of absentee voting, there still might not be enough time to send back the ballot before Election Day.  A North Carolina vote cast from Antarctica is impressive, but Markovich found that three people have voted in this election from an even more distant point: about 12,000 miles from Raleigh, in Perth, Australia.] 

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