• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. vote by mail nc>

Extended deadline for N.C. mailed votes survives, but what about those signatures?

David Hawkings
October 21, 2020
Early voting in North Carolina

A million and a half North Carolinians have already cast ballots in person.

Brian Blanco/Getty Images

The rules for voting by mail in North Carolina just got a bit clearer, and a bit easier. But plenty remains up in the air, 13 days before the voting stops, in one of the seven states on course to decide the presidency.

The state will accept ballots arriving as many as nine days late so long as they're postmarked by Election Day, a federal appeals court ruled 12-3 on Tuesday, a lopsided victory for Democrats and voting rights advocates in which all three judges President Trump named to the he 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against his interests.

But the three dissenting judges urged the Republicans to take their arguments to the Supreme Court, so the dispute may not be over. And federal and state courts are continuing to consider other lawsuits — about contested signatures on absentee ballots and whether poll watchers may observe vote-by-mail tabulation — that could also delay definitive election results for weeks beyond Election Day.


Trump carried the state's 15 electoral votes by 3 percentage points last time, a bigger margin than a handful of his other wins, but polling shows him in a statistical dead heat with former Vice President Joe Biden. GOP Sen. Thom Tillis has become an underdog in his bid for a second term, however.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

After a week of early voting, 1.5 million North Carolinians have cast ballots in person and almost 700,000 have returned absentee envelopes, both records in the state for this stage in the election. But almost 1 percent of the mail ballots have been rejected or put in limbo, mainly because of questions about the signatures.

The 4th Circuit declined to stop the state from accepting delayed-in-the-mail ballots up to Nov. 12. The state Board of Elections agreed to do so last month to settle a lawsuit by voting rights advocates. At that point the GOP leaders in the General Assembly sued, arguing the decision belonged to the Legislature.

They judges bought an argument similar to the one the Supreme Court accepted this week when it allowed a deadline extension in an even bigger purple state, Pennsylvania: The change was a fair response to the surge in voting by mail brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and the recent problems with the Postal Service.

"Everyone must submit their ballot by the same date. The extension merely allows more lawfully cast ballots to be counted, in the event there are any delays precipitated by an avalanche of mail-in ballots," Judge James Wynn wrote in the opinion. The majority also noted that altering things now would violate a principle the Supreme Court has cited several times this year, which is that federal judges should not make last-minute changes in state election procedures.

The dissenters, all nominees of GOP presidents, said the extension "would cause yet further intolerable chaos" and urged the Republicans to appeal to the high court "immediately. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Now."

By the time the court gets such an appeal, Judge Amy Coney Barrett seems certain to have joined the bench. She is on course to be confirmed Monday, positioning her to prevent a potential repeat of the 4-4 deadlock in the Pennsylvania case.

Meanwhile, several thousand ballots already turned in have been in a state of suspended animation because of several lawsuits about "curing," which is when voters are told about problems with their submissions and given a shot at fixing things.

The system lurched ahead a bit this week, when the Board of Elections and Attorney General Josh Stein instructed election officials to follow a complicated process: People will be permitted to correct the ballots they've turned in if they did not sign their envelopes, did so in the wrong way or didn't submit the right information about the witness they were required to find.

But things will be tougher for people who forgot to get a witness or whose envelopes were not sealed when they arrived at election offices. They will be asked if they would like to be sent a fresh ballot for a total do-over.

The next challenge for this system is a lawsuit by the state GOP demanding permission to deploy operatives to county boards of elections so they can watch the processing of absentee ballots — and challenge envelopes they think are fishy but the county inspectors are fine with. A ruling in favor of the Republicans could tie up the tabulation statewide even beyond the new Nov. 12 deadline for ballot arrivals.

From Your Site Articles
  • Two new groups promote online registration, voting by mail - The ... ›
  • Political organizations may send absentee ballot forms - The Fulcrum ›
  • Judge provides minor win for N.C. voting rights advocates - The ... ›
  • N.C. legislators clear bill combining easier mail balloting with voter ID ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Absentee Voting By Mail | Orange County, NC ›
  • Five Steps to Vote by Mail in North Carolina in the 2020 General ... ›
  • North Carolina Absentee Ballots - Vote.org ›
  • How to Vote by Mail with an Absentee Ballot | NC Voter ›
vote by mail nc

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Jeremy Garson

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Jay Paterno

Re-imagining Title IX: An opportunity to flex our civic muscles

Lisa Kay Solomon

'Independent state legislature theory' is unconstitutional

Daniel O. Jamison

How afraid are we?

Debilyn Molineaux

Politicians certifying election results is risky and unnecessary

Kevin Johnson
latest News

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Amanda Becker, The 19th
24 June

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Our Staff
24 June

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

David Meyers
23 June

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Our Staff
23 June

Podcast: Past, present, future

Our Staff
23 June

Video: America's vulnerable elections

Our Staff
22 June
Videos

Video: Memorial Day 2022

Our Staff

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Bridge Alliance intern Sachi Bajaj speaks at the June 12 Civvy Awards.

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Leadership
abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Campaign Finance
Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Media
Abortion rights and anti-abortion protestors at the Supreme Court

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Big Picture
Virginia primary voter

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Voting