Election boards prepare to send out absentee ballots – The Stanly News & Press

RALEIGH — All 100 county boards of elections must send absentee ballots to eligible military and overseas citizens who requested them for the 2024 general election by Sept. 20, according to a new schedule released by the State Board of Elections.
The Board also set Sept. 24 as the date to begin sending absentee ballots to other voters who have requested ballots by mail, including those who use the Portal for the Visually Impaired (VIP) to request and return their ballots.
This schedule ensures that North Carolina will comply with federal law’s requirement to distribute ballots to voters under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) by the 45th day before the election, September 21.
County boards were prepared to send out absentee ballots on Sept. 6, the deadline for mailing absentee ballots under state law. However, rulings by the North Carolina Court of Appeals and the North Carolina Supreme Court required election officials to remove the We The People party line from the presidential race, including the party’s presidential nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and vice presidential nominee, Nicole Shanahan.
In North Carolina, any registered voter can vote by absentee ballot after submitting a ballot application. Voters can request their absentee ballot at votebymail.ncsbe.gov. The deadline for absentee ballot applications is Oct. 29. However, election officials urge voters who wish to vote by mail to request their ballot soon, so they can complete it and return it to the voter’s county board of elections by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5.
As of Thursday, more than 166,000 voters, including more than 13,600 military and overseas voters, have requested ballots in North Carolina.
Over the past week, State Board staff, county election board staff, and voting and printing system vendors have worked to code, design, correct, and print new ballots without the We The People party line. Staff have worked to design contingency plans to ensure ballots could be delivered as quickly as possible.
Due to the timelines for printing, delivering and assembling all absentee ballots in each county, the State Board concluded that the only way to meet the federal deadline for military and overseas citizens was to establish separate dates for the distribution of absentee ballots.
Election officials will first focus on distributing military and overseas citizen ballots, which are a smaller group of ballots. Currently, about 8% of 2024 absentee ballot requests are from military and overseas citizen voters.
State Board staff has arranged for special on-demand ballot printers to be located throughout the state to fulfill military and overseas ballot orders for counties whose orders from their printing vendors will not arrive in time for those ballots to be ready for mailing next Friday. These special printers can print any style of ballot approved for use in the state. There are nearly 2,350 different ballot styles statewide for this election.
In the meantime, staff will be working through the weekend and next week to prepare the online portal for electronic ballot delivery and return, which is available to military and overseas citizen voters. Nearly 90% of military and overseas citizen voters opt for this electronic ballot delivery feature.
This plan allows for the much larger orders of absentee ballots for all other voters to be printed and delivered to county boards in time for counties to prepare their outgoing absentee ballot packets for mailing on September 24.
“This schedule is only possible because of the hard work of election professionals across the state, which will continue throughout the next week,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “Thanks to them, we expect to meet the federal deadline for ballot delivery, and North Carolinians will finally be able to begin voting in this important election.”
The State Board has received many questions about the statewide cost of reprinting ballots. Preliminary estimates show costs vary widely by county, depending on how many ballots need to be reprinted and other factors. Estimates range from a few thousand dollars in some smaller counties to $18,000 in Caldwell County, $55,100 in Durham County and $300,000 in Wake County, home to the largest number of registered voters in the state.
Dates and deadlines for the 2024 general elections
Here are the key dates and deadlines for the 2024 general election in North Carolina:
• September 20: Ballots are distributed to military voters and overseas citizens who have requested them.
• September 24: Absentee ballots are distributed to all remaining voters who have requested them.
• October 11: Voter registration deadline (5 pm).*
• October 17: Early in-person voting begins; same-day registration available.
• October 29: Deadline to request an absentee ballot (5 pm).*
• November 2: Early in-person voting ends (3 p.m.).
• November 5: General election day.
• November 5: Deadline for returning absentee ballots (7:30 p.m.).*
*Voter registration and absentee voting deadlines are different for military voters and overseas citizens.