NC voters who make mistakes on mail-in ballots will now have an easier way to fix them
People who mess up their mail-in ballots will have an easier time fixing them in order to make sure their vote doesn’t get thrown out, under a deal to resolve a lawsuit against North Carolina.
The N.C. State Board of Elections announced Tuesday that it has tentatively reached a settlement with a political group representing retirees that had sued over the state’s various rules for mail-in voting.
In addition to creating new rules making it easier for people to fix issues on their mail-in ballots, the settlement would also extend the amount of time after the election that absentee ballots could come in and still be counted.
Although the settlement was agreed upon unanimously by the state election board’s five members — three Democrats and two Republicans — North Carolina’s top GOP lawmakers fiercely criticized the settlement after it was announced.
N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican from Cleveland County, said the changes would “gut the integrity of North Carolina voting laws” and that he was looking into legal options to stop them from happening.
Under current rules, mail-in ballots wouldn’t be counted unless they are both postmarked on or before Election Day, Nov. 3, and also received by state officials within three days — by Nov. 6. This settlement would push that final date back to Nov. 12, giving nearly an extra week for ballots to arrive.
That comes amid national concerns that newly installed U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a wealthy GOP donor from North Carolina, has attempted to slow down the mail in order to interfere with mail-in voting.
“Possible mail delays was part of the overall discussion, along with the fact that many voters are voting by mail for the first time and a desire on the part of all involved to ensure that the ballots of all eligible voters count,” said Patrick Gannon, the N.C. elections board spokesman, in an email.
Last month, Republican President Donald Trump said he wanted to withhold funding from the U.S. Postal Service specifically because “they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.”
Mail-in voting is expected to increase dramatically this year because of coronavirus health concerns.
As of Monday, with more than a month still to go until Election Day, more than 150,000 North Carolinians had already voted by mail — nearly as many as in all of 2016. And nearly 1 million voters have requested a ballot by mail.
Fraud, or fixing mistakes?
In previous elections, voters in North Carolina didn’t have any guarantee that if they made a mistake on a mail-in ballot they’d be given any chance to fix it. But a different lawsuit changed that earlier this year, when a judge ruled that the state must give voters a chance to address any fixable issues.
The challengers in that previous lawsuit said that by their calculations, that ruling may have prevented the state from throwing out more than 100,000 people’s ballots.
Tuesday’s announcement in the other lawsuit is further good news for voters who make a mistake on their absentee ballot.
The settlement isn’t final yet — it still has to be approved by a judge — but both the state and the group that sued have agreed on the details, said Damon Circosta, chair of the elections board.
“Voters deserve certainty,” Circosta said in a press release announcing the settlement. “Our board, both Democrats and Republicans, agreed unanimously to make these commonsense changes to our process amid the Covid-19 pandemic. We have ensured that our election process is secure and accessible.”
But critics say the settlement also could open the door to people who want to commit voter fraud.
N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican from Rockingham County, said the changes could invite fraud by letting people essentially skirt the state’s requirements for having a witness to vote by mail.
State elections officials said the changes simply mean that for many of the most common errors people can make, they wouldn’t have to go through the process of requesting a new ballot and starting from scratch.
Instead, they would be able to fill out some paperwork to fix the problem. County officials would contact them and ask them to sign an affidavit with the missing information. Errors that would now be fixed more easily — and that voters should still be careful to avoid in the first place — include things like:
▪ Voter signature missing or in the wrong place.
▪ Witness signature missing or in the wrong place.
▪ Witness address not listed.
Battle over witness requirement
Unlike many other states, North Carolina doesn’t do signature-matching, a controversial practice in states where it does exist. But also unlike many other states, North Carolina requires a witness to swear that the person who filled out the ballot is who they say they are.
Berger said the new settlement hypothetically could let people ignore the witness requirement, if they were willing to later lie on an affidavit about it.
Earlier this summer the North Carolina General Assembly wrote a new election law with nearly unanimous support. While it reduced the state’s witness requirements from two witnesses to just one, due to coronavirus concerns, Republican lawmakers were clear that they would not consider completely getting rid of the witness requirement.
Democrats pushed for getting rid of the requirement. So did the challengers who sued the state, who included several individual voters and the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans and who were represented by Democratic lawyer Marc Elias.
Elias has been involved in numerous political lawsuits around the nation in recent years on behalf of Democrats, including legal battles in North Carolina ranging from gerrymandering to the Republican absentee ballot scheme in 2018’s 9th Congressional District election.
In exchange for the state making it easier for voters to fix potential mistakes on mail-in ballots, the challengers agreed to drop the rest of their lawsuit, including their request to get rid of the witness requirement. They had also asked for the state to pay for postage on absentee ballots and loosen the rules surrounding who can help voters request absentee ballots.
Berger said that the settlement could now undo the witness requirement and other parts of the elections law they just passed. He noted that the Board of Elections is appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and represented in court by Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein — and drew a parallel to national politics.
“Can you imagine the reaction if President Trump and Attorney General Barr went into a backroom and rewrote election laws weeks before the election? I cannot overstate how unethical this collusive behavior is,” Berger said in a press release.
Stein rejected that accusation, in a written statement to The News & Observer, calling the changes approved in the settlement “important to protect the security and integrity of our election and to ensure that every eligible voter’s vote counts.”
“These legislators should be ashamed of themselves for trying to undermine people’s faith in the electoral process,” he said.
Witness info left out?
Mail-in voting started earlier this month, and as of Monday around 157,000 voters have already mailed their ballots in. All but around 3,300 of those have been accepted so far, state records show. And of those that haven’t been counted yet, public records show, the most common problem by far is with the witness section of the ballot.
“So far in the 2020 general election, incomplete witness information is the main problem with absentee ballot envelopes,” according to an N.C. State Board of Elections statement Tuesday.
There are numerous other lawsuits still pending that could still change the 2020 elections, on issues ranging from voter ID to disability access, felon voting rights and more.
Last week the N.C. Board of Elections spent several hours in a private meeting that was closed to the public, discussing eight different lawsuits over the elections, then later voted to let N.C. Elections Director Karen Brinson Bell negotiate settlements.
Tuesday’s settlement was the first of those eight cases to be resolved.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 3:43 PM with the headline "NC voters who make mistakes on mail-in ballots will now have an easier way to fix them."
