North Carolina will mail ballots two weeks late after RFK Jr. suit

North Carolina will begin mailing absentee ballots late next week after a lawsuit from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delayed their distribution. 

On Friday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced that all 100 counties must send ballots to eligible military and overseas citizens on Sept. 20. Ballots will be sent out by Sept. 24 for all other voters who have requested ballots by mail.

“This schedule is only possible because of the hard work of elections professionals across this state that will continue throughout the next week,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “Because of them, we expect to meet the federal deadline for ballot delivery, and North Carolinians can finally start voting in this important election.” 

The Tar Heel state was poised to send ballots out on Sept. 6 before the former presidential candidate successfully sued to get his name off of the November ballot after dropping out of the contest. This ruling forced state election officials to scramble and reprint the ballots.

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As of Thursday, more than 166,000 North Carolina voters, including more than 13,600 military and overseas voters, had requested ballots. Preliminary estimates show the reprint effort cost the state at least $373,000. 

The election body said it will prioritize requested ballots for military and overseas voters due to it only making up about 8 percent of absentee requests. State Board staff also organized on-demand ballot printers to be placed throughout the state to ensure ballots are printed before the Sept. 20 deadline. 

“This plan allows time for the much larger orders of absentee ballots for all other voters to be printed and delivered to the county boards in time for counties to prepare their outgoing absentee ballot packages for mailing on Sept. 24,” the NCSBE release reads.