North Carolina will begin mailing out absentee ballots next weekend after a lawsuit filed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delayed distribution of the ballots.
on friday, North Carolina State Board of Elections The governor announced that all 100 counties must send ballots to military personnel and those living overseas who are eligible to vote by September 20. All other voters who requested to vote by mail will receive their ballots by September 24.
“This timeline is possible thanks to the hard work of election professionals across the state, which continues into next week,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “Thanks to them, we expect to meet the federal deadline for ballot delivery so North Carolinians can finally begin voting in this important election.”
The Tar Heel State was ready to send out ballots on Sept. 6 before a former presidential candidate filed a lawsuit and won to have his name removed from the November ballot after dropping out of the race. The ruling forced state election officials to scramble to reprint ballots.
As of Thursday, more than 166,000 North Carolina voters had requested ballots, including more than 13,600 for military and overseas voters. Preliminary estimates suggest the state has spent at least $373,000 on the reprinting effort.
The elections commission said it would prioritize ballot requests from military and overseas voters, as they only account for about 8% of absentee ballot requests. State board officials also arranged for on-demand ballot printers to be installed across the state to ensure ballots are printed by the Sept. 20 deadline.
“This plan will allow time for bulk orders of absentee ballots for all other voters to be printed and delivered to county commissioners so that counties can prepare and send out absentee ballots in time for mailing on September 24th,” the NCSBE announcement said.
