On the day after the November 8, 2016 election, North Carolina State Board of Elections had reported a preliminary write-in count for Jill Stein of 509 write-ins. As counting is continuing, her total now stands at 1,506. See the current total. North Carolina State Board of Elections updates the vote totals daily.

The largest write-in total for president ever reported in North Carolina was in 1996, when Ralph Nader was credited with 2,108.

In 2016, Jill Stein was the only candidate who qualified to have write-ins tallied. Note that the Board of Elections is now reporting 56,945 other write-ins for president. It is unfortunate for historians and for all of us that the state will never tell us any further breakdown of this very large number of votes. In the middle of the night, November 8-9, someone at the State Board posted a write-in total of 17 votes for Bernie Sanders, but this was taken down shortly after it had been posted. Probably one county had counted them, and sent them in to the State Board of Elections, and then someone at the Board absently-mindedly put them into the state tally before realizing policy did not permit that. Certainly the true total of Bernie Sanders write-ins was in the thousands in North Carolina.

In 2012, North Carolina reported 11,537 miscellaneous write-ins, and 534 write-ins for Virgil Goode, the Constitution Party nominee, who was the only declared write-in presidential candidate in 2012.