Kennedy’s ballot decision means reprint for thousands

Third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s narrow victory in the North Carolina Supreme Court was a setback for people hoping to vote early by mail, including those who can’t get to the polls in person and military personnel serving overseas. It also sent officials at the state’s 100 county election boards scrambling to vote, including staff in Cumberland County, whose office is now having to spend money to reprint thousands of ballots.

However, according to Elections Director Angie Amaro, disruptions to the voting process in our county could be minimized with a slow approach to preparing mail-in ballots.

“We only need to replace the ballots, not the envelopes, because they were not sealed for mailing due to the lawsuit,” Amaro said. “We will use poll workers and officials to prepare the absentee ballots for mailing.”

County polling places were supposed to be allowed to start sending out absentee ballots Friday to people who wanted to vote by mail, according to the state’s schedule for the Nov. 5 general election. But that same day, the state Supreme Court ordered new absentee ballots to be printed, removing Kennedy’s name, and the court’s ruling ended mailing.

Kennedy left the race on August 23 and endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump. He had appeared on the ballot in North Carolina as the candidate of a new party, We The People. On August 29, the North Carolina Board of Elections denied his request to remove his name, concluding that the time “it would take to prepare and print new ballots would leave most North Carolina counties without ballots until mid-September at the earliest and would result in significant additional costs.”

Kennedy sued. A Wake County Superior Court judge upheld the board’s decision. But the state Supreme Court overturned the judge’s decision.

Information on the 2024 elections: Here’s what North Carolina needs to know ahead of the November election

How Fort Liberty and other soldiers may be affected

Amaro said Cumberland Board of Elections staff had about 3,200 mail-in ballots ready to be sent out as of Friday, Sept. 6, at a cost of $51,360 to print. The reprinting will take more taxpayer money — the new total is $60,209.

As for when the new ballots will be sent out statewide, that remains up in the air.

“We are waiting for the directives of the Council of State on that date,” Amaro said.

The date is important, especially when it comes to ballots for military personnel serving overseas, such as our military personnel stationed at Fort Liberty, who must have time to receive the ballots they requested and return them by mail.

Federal law requires those ballots to be sent out 45 days before an election, making the deadline Sept. 21, Amaro said.

“They will have time to collect their ballot and return it to our office,” she said.

The electoral director also expressed confidence that the delay in voting would not affect people with disabilities or transport issues who had requested a postal vote.

“They still have one month to complete their ballot and send it to our office,” she said.

North Carolina Voting Changes: ‘A Real Burden’ for Small Counties

One potential problem with the deadline for mail-in ballots to be sent to service members — nine days away — is that Cumberland County cannot move forward until the state’s other 99 counties are ready.

That’s according to Linda Devore, a member of the county’s election board, who said the reprinting costs could be particularly hard on smaller counties.

“I think it’s going to be a real burden on smaller counties,” she said.

The state could seek a waiver of the federal deadline, according to a state council press release.

Democratic and Republican officials have divergent views

Kennedy has only asked that his name be removed from the ballot in key states. Kennedy and some election analysts say the request helps Trump by avoiding a split among conservative voters.

In its August 29 decision to keep Kennedy on the ballot, the state election board split 3-2, with the three Democrats in the majority.

The Supreme Court’s decision to remove his name is largely a partisan divide: four Republicans are in the majority, two Democrats and one Republican are in the minority. The Michigan Supreme Court, which leans to the left and had to make a similar decision on Kennedy last week, chose to keep his name.

Trump and Harris are within a point of each other in North Carolina, and even small swings in votes can matter.

North Carolina Voters Have Confidence in Electoral System

As ballot reprints get ready to begin, North Carolina voters themselves appear confident in the “safety, security and integrity” of the election, according to an August poll by Catawba College and YouGov polling firm. Eight in 10 believe the results were counted fairly in 2020, and 71% have confidence in the integrity of the election this cycle, the poll found.

In Cumberland County at least, concerns about election security should be minimal.

The board is composed of three Democrats: Chairwoman Irene C. Grimes, Secretary Derek Edmonds and Billy R. King. There are two Republicans, Devore and James H. Baker. The party split reflects the statewide practice of county board majorities aligning with the party of the person who occupies the governor’s office, Democrat Roy Cooper.

The regular staff of the electoral board and those hired to help with elections are drawn from the community.

A reader asked if there were any “election deniers” on our board. The term generally refers to someone who questions or disputes Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election, known as the “Big Lie.” There are websites that track such people in North Carolina and elsewhere, but no one on our board appears to fit that profile based on public statements.

North Carolina Board Member ‘Closed Loop’ System Protects Ballots

The ballots are secure and part of a “closed-loop system,” Devore said. When people vote in person, which is about 90 percent of the time, they have to feed their ballots into the tabulator themselves.

“The ballot counter counts your vote at that point, and it’s stored on a USB drive,” she explained. “That USB drive comes back to the elections office and is stored on a central computer, and that’s how your vote is secured.”

She added: “If you want reassurance about the quality of our vote-counting system, think back to the 2020 statewide recount, when we recounted 5.5 million paper ballots for the race for Supreme Court Chief Justice, and the vote total changed by four votes.”

At the same time, Devore said, election officials are verifying all questionable voter registrations by sending out notices and checking to see if they are returned, she said. It’s a process that keeps election officials busy — especially since about two weeks ago, the state board dumped a tranche of registrations into counties that it had stockpiled.

“About 5,000 people came to Cumberland,” she said.

Cumberland Board of Elections Chairman: Voter Fraud Is ‘Almost Non-existent’

Grimes said voters can have confidence in Cumberland’s voting process because there are checks and balances at every step of the process, especially with voter ID in place.

“If someone tried to cheat, they would get caught,” she said. “I would also say that voter fraud is virtually nonexistent from a voter perspective” and that concern about it “is almost an answer looking for a problem in my book.”

Grimes said she also wanted to address concerns she’s heard recently about illegal immigrants voting.

She said: “Illegal immigrants have other things to worry about. They’re not going to risk five years in prison to go and vote when they’re trying to make a living.”

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be contacted at [email protected] or 910-486-3559.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: RFJ Jr. is no longer on the North Carolina ballot. How reprinting will work in Fayetteville