Due to a state Supreme Court ruling related to former presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., mail-in voting is delayed across North Carolina, including Buncombe County.
The state Supreme Court ordered the N.C State Board of Elections to remove RFK Jr.’s name from the ballot Sept. 9, forcing all 100 counties to reprint millions of absentee ballots that were printed and ready to be mailed starting Sept. 6.
The decision upheld a state Court of Appeals ruling Sept. 6 that overturned a trial judge’s ruling that would have forced Kennedy’s name to stay on the ballot. The move will delay ballots getting to voters by weeks and could cost taxpayers $1 million statewide and more than $58,000 total in Buncombe County, including $28,000 to reprint ballots.
Officials in Buncombe had already spent $30,000 to print 5,300 ballots before the ruling, said Corinne Duncan, Buncombe’s director of elections in a video release Sept. 10. About 6,000 absentee-by-mail ballot requests had been submitted countywide as of Sept. 10. Because voters can begin requesting the mail ballots as early as Jan. 1, this first printing is typically the largest of the election cycle, Duncan said. More than 2.9 million had been printed statewide, according to a release from the N.C. Board of Elections.
Voters have until Tuesday, Oct. 29, to request mail-in ballots.
“This decision imposes a tremendous hardship on our county boards at an extremely busy time. But our election officials are professionals, and I have no doubt we will rise to the challenge,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state elections board, in a statement.
“We will have to adjust,” Duncan added.
Buncombe election officials now have to wait to get an updated electronic file from the state elections board before they can begin reprinting ballots without RFK, which Duncan said could take several days. The state has a rule that absentee ballots around the state must go out at the same time, so local officials are in a holding pattern until the state issues updated files.
Once that happens and ballots are reprinted, elections officials must run accuracy tests to ensure the updated ballots will be counted in vote tally machines. This could take several weeks for everyone in the state to perform, putting North Carolina in jeopardy of missing a federal deadline to distribute military and overseas ballots to voters by Sept. 21. That has prompted the state board to seek a potential waiver of that deadline from the U.S. Department of Defense, it said in a news release.
While there is no deadline in state law for a party to withdraw its presidential nominee and have their names replaced or removed from the ballot, the state elections board must determine whether it is practical to reprint ballots if such a request comes close to an election but before ballots go out, per N.C. Administrative Code, according to a state board release.
By state law, absentee ballots must go out by Sept. 6 to voters who already requested them, including military and overseas voters, according to the state board. Any potential consequences for missing that deadline would be brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to Patrick Gannon, spokesperson for the state Board of Elections.
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