Following delay, absentee ballots will soon go out to voters, State Board says
ASHEVILLE – North Carolina counties will soon begin sending out mail-in absentee ballots to voters following a legal battle between former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the N.C. State Board of Elections that delayed ballot distribution and will cost many counties tens of thousands of dollars in reprinting fees.
After suspending his campaign in August, Kennedy fought his way through the state court system to have his name removed from the ballot in North Carolina. On Sept. 9, the N.C. Supreme Court weighed in, ordering county boards of elections to reprint ballots without Kennedy’s name, effectively cutting short the mail-in ballot window by more than two weeks. Ballots were originally scheduled to go out Sept. 6.
The State Board of Elections announced Sept. 13 that all 100 county boards of elections are required to send absentee ballots to eligible military and overseas citizens who requested them for this year’s general election on Sept. 20. County boards will begin sending absentee ballots to other voters who have requested ballots by mail on Sept. 24.
“This schedule is only possible because of the hard work of elections professionals across this state that will continue throughout the next week,” said Karen Brinson Bell, the State Board’s executive director. “Because of them, we expect to meet the federal deadline for ballot delivery, and North Carolinians can finally start voting in this important election.”
Elections boards are required to send ballots to military and overseas ballots no later than 45 days prior to the election. This year, the deadline is Sept. 21.
According to the State Board, cost estimates for reprinting ballots range from a few thousand dollars in less populated counties to $18,000 in Caldwell County, $55,100 in Durham County and $300,000 in Wake County, which has the most registered voters in the state.
In Buncombe County, the county’s elections services department estimated Sept. 16 it will cost $18,600 to reprint ballots. Originally, Corinne Duncan, county elections director, projected it would cost nearly $10,000 more, though the effort hasn’t required as many staff members as previously thought, according to the county.
Despite the lower cost, having to reprint ballots is not without other significant impacts, according to Duncan.
“This particular change is resulting in increased overtime and weekend hours, difficulty in acquiring replacement materials, an increase in cost for labor and more materials plus rush fees from vendors, a compressed timeline for logic and accuracy testing of our tabulators, and more need for communication with voters,” Duncan told the Citizen Times in a Sept. 16 email. “The time spent adjusting to change stretches resources and reduces our capacity to adjust to other challenges we might need to navigate.”
More: RFK Jr. will not appear on ballots in North Carolina, delaying the start mail-in voting
More: Answer Man: Is RFK Jr. still on the presidential ballot in North Carolina?
Jacob Biba is the county watchdog reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Reach him at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: NC absentee ballots will go out soon