Beaufort County’s Board of Elections meets at 5 p.m. today to conduct a preliminary hearing on more voter challenges filed with the board earlier this week.

“We’re now up to 102,” said Kellie Harris Hopkins, the county’s elections director, on Thursday. “There are three other batches of them.”

Asked if the board would be able to process all the voter challenges before the election, Hopkins said, “I don’t think we have a choice. This is the most inconvenient time that they can be filed because the deadline to actually file them is (today). They have to be filed within 25 days of the election. So, the challengers have left us little time to deal with this.”

Earlier this month, Shane Hubers challenged the right of 29 voters in Belhaven to vote, register to vote or remain registered to vote in the upcoming Nov. 8 general election. On Oct. 7, the elections board conducted a preliminary hearing on those challenges. The board has scheduled a full hearing on 21 challenges. During the Oct. 7 meeting, the board dismissed six of the challenges because those six voters are no longer registered to vote in Beaufort County, and Hubers withdrew two of the challenges Friday.

Earlier this month, Hopkins explained that Hubers’ challenges stem from a mailing by Ricky Radcliffe’s campaign about a year ago. Radcliffe was a mayoral candidate in Belhaven in 2015, but he lost to Mayor Adam O’Neal. Those mailings were returned to Radcliffe’s campaign because the people mailed the items no longer live at the location where the mailings were addressed to or the mailings were unable to be forwarded, according to Hopkins.

Under North Carolina law, a returned mailing can be used as prima facie evidence that someone no longer lives at that address, Hopkins reminded the board Oct. 7.

In other election-related matters, traditional voter registration for the general election ends today, but eligible residents may use the same day-registration opportunity to register during the early voting period that begins Thursday and ends Nov. 5 at 1 p.m.

Hopkins said the effects of Hurricane Matthew, including post-storm flooding this week, would not interfere with the opening of the early voting period next week. “We have contacted all of our polling places, both one-stop and Election Day, and, other than a couple of them saying they had a minor roof leak, there’s no damage to any of our polling places,” she said.