(The Center Square) – Over 100 completed absentee ballots have already been received by the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
The ballots went out Friday, following a court order requiring the reprinting of millions of ballots after litigation by former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Karen Brinson Bell, executive director for the board, shared the information on how many have been received during a conference with the press on Monday morning.
These are the first votes in the general election and were all received electronically from overseas and military voters.
Starting Tuesday, absentee ballots will start to go out to voters around the state who requested them in all 100 counties.
“That means county boards will place tens of thousands of absentee ballots in the mail to voters over the next couple of days,” Bell said. “As of this morning, county boards have received more than 207,600 absentee ballot requests for this election. This includes more than 19,000 requests from military and overseas voters.”
At this point in 2020, over 250,000 completed ballots had already been returned.
The delay in this election was caused by an order from the state Supreme Court to remove Kennedy from the ballot. At the time of the decision, more than 2.9 million ballots had already been printed. The original date for absentee ballots to go out was Sept. 6.
Bell said counties moved quickly to get ballots redesigned and printed.
“Our core work, the very compass that drives us, is to ensure that every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot,” Bell said. “At the end of the day, these are dedicated folks. We take oaths to do this work, and we are committed to doing this work.”
The state still met the federal overseas and military ballot deadline of 45 days before the election, which was Saturday.
Bell encourages voters to submit their ballots as soon as possible.
“The U.S. Postal Service is saying to make sure you put your completed ballot in the mail at least a week before Election Day or earlier, if possible, to ensure that it will arrive on time to be counted,” Bell said.
All ballots mailed in must be in county election board offices by the close of polls on Election Day.
“I’ll reiterate that, in order for an absentee ballot cast by mail to count, it must be received by the county board of elections no later than 7:30 p.m. on Election Day,” Bell said.
Bell said that many safeguards have been put in place to ensure secure elections.
“Simply put, absentee voting is safe and secure in North Carolina, and many laws and processes work together to ensure security in the absentee voting process,” she said.
Counties shouldered the cost of reprinting their ballots. There is not yet a report on the final cost of that decision.
Early in-person voting begins Oct. 17 and Election Day is Nov. 5. The voter registration deadline is Oct. 11, though same-day registration is available. Absentee ballots can be requested through Oct. 29.
