Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the N.C. State Board of Elections are in a legal battle that has slowed down the distribution of ballots and will cost many counties tens of thousands of dollars in reprinting fees. Soon, North Carolina counties will start sending mail-in absentee ballots to voters.
Kennedy worked his way through the North Carolina state court system to get his name taken off the ballot after he stopped running for office in August.
The N.C. Supreme Court weighed in on September 9 and told local boards of elections to reprint ballots without Kennedy’s name on them. This cut the time for mail-in ballots by more than two weeks. The ballots were supposed to be sent out on September 6.
The State Board of Elections said on September 13 that all 100 county boards of elections must give absentee ballots to eligible U.S. military and overseas citizens who asked for them before the general election on September 20. Beginning on September 24, county boards will send absentee ballots to voters who have asked for votes by mail.
The State Board’s executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, said, “This schedule is only possible because of the hard work of election professionals across this state.
That work will continue all next week.” People in North Carolina can finally start voting in this important election because of them. We expect to meet the federal limit for ballot delivery.
At least 45 days before the election, election boards have to send ballots to military and foreign voters. The due date for this year is September 21.
The State Board says that reprinting ballots will cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars in areas with few people to as much as $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.
The elections services department in Buncombe County said on September 16 that it would cost $18,600 to make new ballots. Corinne Duncan, who is in charge of voting in the county, first thought it would cost almost $10,000 more. However, the work hasn’t needed as many staff members as they thought it would.
Even though it costs less, Duncan says that having to reprint votes has other big effects as well.
Duncan wrote in an email to the Citizen Times on September 16 that the change would mean more overtime and weekend work, trouble getting replacement materials, higher costs for labor and more materials plus rush fees from vendors, less time to test the logic and accuracy of our tabulators, and more need to talk to voters.
“The time we spend getting used to change uses up resources and makes it harder for us to get used to other problems we might have to solve.”