Review of mail-in ballots begins in NC amid partisan fight over process
A key step in the 2020 fall election got started in North Carolina on Tuesday, as county elections boards across the state began processing absentee ballots.
That’s going to be a big job this fall. Concerns about voting in person during the coronavirus pandemic have increased demand for mail-in ballots. By the end of Monday, 1,095,327 North Carolina voters had requested absentee ballots, more than 10 times as many as had at this point in 2016, according to the State Board of Elections.
In Mecklenburg County, 35,645 completed ballots had been received through Tuesday, according to a county elections official.
Wake County has already received nearly 34,000 completed ballots from county residents. That’s nearly 5,000 more than the total number of absentee ballots cast in Wake in 2016, said county elections board chairman Greg Flynn, and Election Day is still more than a month away.
“I would suspect this is not going to be our largest batch,” Flynn said.
As Flynn spoke, he and the other four members of the board were sifting through the 33,899 envelopes for civilian ballots the county has received so far (1,075 ballots from overseas and military voters were to be processed separately). Each member took a box of about 450 ballots at a time and checked the cover of each envelope to make sure it contained signatures for the voter and a witness as well as the witness’s name and address.
Democrats and Republicans are fighting over how to handle mail-in ballots that contain mistakes. In August, a federal judge ruled that the state must give voters a chance to address any fixable problems with their ballots, but the details remain contentious.
In late August, the state board spelled out how local election boards should give voters a chance to fix ballots that are missing signatures or addresses or have them in the wrong place.
That process was amended last week, after the State Board of Elections announced that it had reached a settlement with a political group representing retirees that had sued over the state’s various rules for mail-in voting. Voters are to be sent a “cure certification” to confirm the missing information or, if the ballot envelope arrives unsealed, a new ballot.
The state board also agreed to extend the time after the election that absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day could still be counted, from Nov. 6 to Nov. 12.
Republicans call the changes illegal. Among their objections, they say the process for fixing mistakes on a mail-in ballot could invite fraud by letting people ignore the witness requirement if they are willing to later lie on the cure certification form.
The two Republicans on the five-person state board voted to approve the lawsuit settlement but later resigned, with one saying he had been misled about the details. President Donald Trump’s campaign committee, the Republican National Committee and Republican leaders of the state House and Senate filed lawsuits Saturday seeking to stop the changes.
As the processing of absentee ballots began Tuesday, the state Republican Party lashed out at an email the state board sent to local boards directing them to follow the state’s guidance.
“This brazen lawlessness the night before county boards start reviewing absentee ballot returns is the worst-case scenario for election integrity,” party spokesman Tim Wigginton said in a written statement.
Democrats say Republicans are raising questions about the absentee ballots simply to create mistrust in the election.
Meanwhile, the Wake County election board is following the state board’s process for fixing absentee ballots it finds with mistakes. Flynn, the chairman, told fellow board members that the certification process satisfies the federal judge’s order from August.
“That is currently the law,” Flynn said. “It’s being challenged in court, but it hasn’t reached the point where it could be... there’s no injunction. That’s where it stands right now.”
By 1 p.m., the Wake board members had gone through 39 boxes of envelopes, more than 17,000, and expected to continue until evening. The envelopes were turned over to county staff, who pulled out, flattened and sorted the ballots to get them ready to count by machine.
The results of the mail-in votes will not be made public until after the polls close on Nov. 3. The Wake elections board will meet each week through the election to process what’s expected to be tens of thousands of additional absentee ballots.
Statewide, about 275,000 mail-in ballots had been cast as of Monday, according to the State Board of Elections. That’s a little less than 4% of registered voters, though residents can still register to vote through Oct. 9 and can register and vote in person at one-stop early voting sites between Oct. 15 and Oct. 31.
So far, Democrats seem more inclined to vote absentee than Republicans in North Carolina. Democrats account for just under 36% of registered voters but have cast nearly 54% of mail-in ballots so far, according to the State Board of Elections. About 30% of registered voters are Republicans, who account for less than 17% of absentee ballots.
Unaffiliated voters make up most of the remaining mail-in voters so far.
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 4:57 PM with the headline "Review of mail-in ballots begins in NC amid partisan fight over process."
