Absentee Voting on hold in North Carolina as new ballots are printed
County boards of elections in North Carolina are now working to design and print new ballots for the 2024 general election without the We The People Party’s presidential and vice presidential candidates on them, following a state court decision.
The N.C. Supreme Court, in a 4–3 ruling late Monday, required election officials to remove the We The People party line from the presidential contest on the ballot, including the party’s presidential nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and vice-presidential nominee, Nicole Shanahan.
County boards of elections were prepared to send ballots to voters late last week, which is the state law deadline to begin absentee voting. With the court decision, revised ballots will now be printed and delivered to eligible voters who have requested an absentee ballot as soon as they are available, which is expected to occur in the next couple of weeks.
The exact date when all 100 counties will have new ballots ready to send to absentee voters is uncertain. When that occurs, all counties will begin sending ballots on the same day. This is to ensure voters across the state have the same amount of time to cast their ballots.
Because of the order to reprint ballots, the State Board is preparing for the possibility that North Carolina cannot meet the 45-day deadline in federal law — Sept. 21 — for distributing military and overseas ballots to voters. The State Board has begun discussions with the U.S. Department of Defense to seek a potential waiver of that deadline, if ballots are not ready in all counties by that date.
There are 2,348 different ballot styles statewide for the 2024 general election. A ballot style is the ballot with a specific combination of contests that a voter is eligible to vote on, based on their residence. More than 2.9 million individual ballots had been printed before the court order.
“We will continue to consult with counties and ballot vendors to determine the feasible start date for distributing absentee ballots statewide, mindful of the goal to meet the 45-day federal deadline,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “This decision imposes a tremendous hardship on our county boards, at an extremely busy time. But our election officials are professionals, and I have no doubt we will rise to the challenge.”
The State Board has asked county boards to strictly separate and move to storage all ballots that had been printed with the We The People Party line on them. This is to avoid any possibility that the wrong ballots are sent to voters.
Through Monday, 146,603 voters, including more than 12,900 military and overseas voters, had requested ballots for the 2024 general election. See Absentee-By-Mail Request Stats: 2024 General Election.
2024 General Election Dates and Deadlines
Here are key dates and deadlines for the 2024 general election in North Carolina:
- Oct. 11: Voter registration deadline (5 p.m.).*
- Oct. 17: In-person early voting begins; same-day registration available.
- Oct. 29: Absentee ballot request deadline (5 p.m.).*
- Nov. 2: In-person early voting ends (3 p.m.).
- Nov. 5: General Election Day.
- Nov. 5: Absentee ballot return deadline (7:30 p.m.).*
*Voter registration and absentee voting deadlines are different for military and overseas citizen voters.
