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GREENSBORO - Already dealing with record-setting voter turnout, the Guilford County Board of Elections tried to extend the hours for early voting but was turned down by the state Tuesday.

Through 10 days of early voting, 88,416 people have voted, surpassing the final 2004 mark of 71,464.

Yet a proposal to lengthen the early-voting schedule, which passed by a 2-1 vote of the county elections board Tuesday, was denied a hearing by the State Board of Elections. Any changes to the voting schedule must be approved by the State Board of Elections and the U.S. Department of Justice.

George Gilbert, Guilford elections director, said late Tuesday that he had received a voicemail from the state elections director saying that the state board wouldn't hear an appeal to let the county alter its schedule.

"At this point, it appears stuck because we can't get state approval," Gilbert said, adding the state said it would not hear any more appeals from local elections boards on schedule changes.

Boards in other counties already had voted to add days or to extend hours for early voting before the state stopped making decisions on schedule changes.

Guilford County's proposal would have been short-notice. Early voting ends Saturday, and Election Day is less than a week away.

Most election schedules are set months in advance, although counties such as Cumberland and Wake altered their schedules shortly after early voting began Oct. 16.

Kathryn Lindley, Guilford County's Republican elections board member, cast the dissenting vote Tuesday.

"We've had more people than in the past elections, and we modified voting sites," Lindley said, referring to adding voting machines and tweaking some of the 19 early voting locations to allow more space for voters. "I think we have provided opportunities."

During the first Sunday voting day in Guilford County, more than 4,700 voters hit the polls in four hours. Two days later, a group of mostly Democrats unsuccessfully lobbied the elections board for another Sunday of voting.

Paul Mengert, the county Democratic Party chairman, and Jim Slaughter, a Greensboro attorney who previously argued for a second day of Sunday voting, also lobbied for the extra Saturday hours.

Mengert said he wanted more time outside of work hours for people to vote.

The Guilford elections board also asked the district attorney Tuesday to seek charges against eight felons in the county jail who are accused of filling out fraudulent voter registration forms.

Board members voted 3-0 on the fraud charges, which made news Friday when one man was accused of falsifying information on a voter registration form, which led to a review of registrations addressed to the county jail.

In early October, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters Piedmont Triad had a voter registration drive for inmates at the county jail and prison farm., where they gathered roughly 100 registrations.

Each inmate was told that people with felony convictions on record are not eligible to vote under state law, representatives from the league said.

Felons in North Carolina aren't allowed to vote until their records are cleared, and the eight inmates are on the felon list that the board uses to check registrations.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com