New mail ballot rules in North Carolina may lead to the rejection of thousands of ballots, left-leaning voting rights groups warned this week. The groups urged voters to check the status of their mail ballot or vote in person to make sure their votes count.
At issue is a requirement that voters seal not only the outer envelope of their mail ballot but also an inner envelope that contains the ballot itself.
Two groups, Common Cause North Carolina and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, tracked data from 27 of the state’s 100 counties and found a higher ballot rejection rate than in past elections, mostly because of unsealed inner envelopes. The rejection rate is at about 3 percent statewide, the groups found, though it was two or three times as high as in some larger counties.
More ballots being rejected could prove decisive in a state that is known for its razor-thin election margins and that this year is also holding a Senate race that could help determine control of the chamber.
“Potentially thousands of votes could be spoiled by this new guidance,” said Sailor Jones, the state director of Common Cause North Carolina. “This is a huge deal for North Carolina.”
Elections officials began mailing ballots on Sept. 4, making North Carolina the first state to do so ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms. That same day, the North Carolina State Board of Elections sent a memo to county election directors about new rules. Among them was a mandate to rule an unsealed inner envelope a “deficiency” requiring a ballot to be rejected.
The inner envelope was added to mail ballots in 2023 to comply with a voter I.D. requirement when it went into effect. Voters must put their ballot in an inner envelope and include a copy of their qualifying I.D. in a sleeve outside of it; the inner envelope then goes into a separate envelope for mailing.
In previous elections, county elections offices accepted mail ballots with unsealed inner envelopes as long as the outer envelope was sealed, said Hilary Harris Klein, senior counsel for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s voting rights program. That changed after last month’s memo.
The State Board of Elections flipped to a Republican majority last year.
Ms. Klein said she attended a public ballot canvassing meeting in Guilford County on Tuesday during which officials were rejecting ballots with unsealed inner envelopes.
“There doesn’t appear to be any evidence of tampering or fraud or anything,” she said. The new state board, she added, has just taken a “harsher view of what voters should have to do.”
“From my perspective, they’re just tossing ballots with no evidence of a security issue,” she said.
Gerry Cohen, a board of elections member in Wake County, the largest in the state, said that about 2.5 percent of ballots were rejected over the first three weeks of mail voting because of unsealed inner envelopes. That rate had dropped slightly to about 2 percent this past week, he said. The county has received about 8,000 ballots so far.
“It has increased the number being rejected,” he said of the new guidance. “The state argued that somebody could have — since your inner envelope was unsealed — could have somehow gone into it and changed the markings on the ballot and put it back in.” He added, “I find that far-fetched.”
The North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, an advocacy organization, along with other groups and two voters, sued over the new rules last month. They argued that the last-minute guidance would disenfranchise voters, especially older people or people with disabilities who are more likely to vote by mail.
The plaintiffs were represented by the Elias Law Group, whose chairman, the elections lawyer Marc Elias, founded Democracy Docket, a group aligned with the Democratic Party that tracks election cases. Democracy Docket first reported on the mail-in ballot rejection rates on Tuesday.
On Monday, Judge Thomas D. Schroeder of the Middle District of North Carolina declined to block the guidance from taking effect. The plaintiffs waited 18 days after the memo to sue, a delay the judge called “significant.” And he said blocking the guidance now would be “infeasible at this stage in the midst of voting.”
Judge Schroeder also noted that voters whose ballots had been rejected could still vote, with a new mail-in ballot, in person during the early voting period or on Election Day. But voting rights advocates also worried that voters might not find out in time either to fix their ballot or to vote in person.
In a statement on Tuesday, Sam Hayes, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, praised the ruling and said the board wanted voters to participate, adding that people “must follow the rules established to protect the integrity of our elections.”
On Wednesday, the board said its data showed “a slight increase” in rejected ballot rates — up to 3.1. percent from 2.6 percent in 2022 — and noted that ballots could be rejected “for many reasons.” It urged voters to cast their ballots as soon as possible.
Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, emphasized that the board’s guidance was leading to more ballot rejections.
“It’s infuriating,” he said on X on Tuesday. “North Carolinians, please make a plan to vote this year, in person if possible. And if you’re voting by mail, make sure you seal both envelopes on your ballot. Don’t let them take away your vote.”
Richard Fausset contributed reporting.
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