Voting-rights advocates are suing North Carolina election officials over new rules that determine whether mail-in ballots are counted or rejected.
The North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans and a pair of advocacy groups that represent Asian voters and rural voters are asking a federal judge to halt new statewide election rules that would make it easier to disqualify mail-in ballots over technicalities.
Other WRAL Top Stories
The groups — who were joined by two registered voters in the lawsuit — say the rules violate provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act for allowing ballots to be rejected over immaterial errors, among other claims. The plaintiffs accuse the Republican-controlled North Carolina State Board of Elections of rushing through the rules on Sept. 4, the same day election officials began sending ballots to voters seeking to vote by mail. Election Day is Nov. 3.
The board’s “late-breaking policies threaten to disenfranchise North Carolinians for immaterial mistakes,” the plaintiffs said in their lawsuit.
People who vote by mail are required to use multiple envelopes placed inside a larger envelope. The new election rules would make it easier to reject ballots that don’t follow specific instructions for the envelopes. For instance, if the bigger envelope is sealed but another envelope inside the sealed envelope isn’t also sealed, elections officials can throw out that ballot more easily.
Or, if someone uses the correct outer envelope but, inside of it, places their ballot inside the envelope intended for their voter ID rather than the separate envelope for their ballot, that could also make their ballot eligible to be thrown out. And if two people living together at the same address put their ballots in the same envelope, that could also now cause one or both ballots to be thrown out.
The state elections board declined to comment. Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director, has previously said the board is “confident that this process will be as smooth, secure, and seamless as possible for voters."
Supporters of the new rules say they’ll help improve election integrity, even though election audits haven’t revealed evidence of widespread voter fraud. Opponents of the changes have argued that they will unnecessarily punish voters who might misunderstand North Carolina’s rules for mailing ballots.
Democrats tend to vote by mail more than Republicans, so the new rules to toss more ballots could end up favoring GOP candidates in a politically divided state, where statewide elections can be decided by narrow margins.
The plaintiffs also took issue with new rules allowing North Carolinians voting by mail to address errors by filling-out a replacement ballot.
They argue that a voter’s ability to cast a replacement ballot depends on many factors beyond a voter’s control, such as the time it takes county officials to notify the voter of errors and the speed of the mail. The groups contend the new rules violate voters’ constitutional right to due process by invalidating ballots without a meaningful opportunity to fix purported deficiencies.
“In many circumstances, voters will not receive replacement ballots in time to return them; others will not receive notice in time to make arrangements to vote in person (if they are even capable of doing so),” the plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit, adding: “After all, many people who vote by mail do so because their circumstances make it difficult or impossible to vote in person. And voters whose absentee ballots are invalidated after polls close on Election Day have no recourse at all—they are disenfranchised.”
The new state rules also advise election officials to confirm a voter’s identity by comparing a mail-in voter’s signature on their inner application envelope with other signatures available from the same voter.
The plaintiffs argue that signature-matching is “notoriously fraught with error” and that North Carolina election officials aren’t properly trained in signature verification.
Hayes, the state elections director, said earlier this month that if people plan to vote by mail, they should be careful to read all the instructions carefully, and to mail their ballot sooner rather than later, in case there is a problem that could force them to have to start from scratch.