General election starts in N. Carolina
606K-plus ballots sent via mail since Friday
Hundreds of ballots were accepted in North Carolina on Tuesday, making the
Tar Heel State the first in the nation to vote in the November general election.
County elections officials accepted 903 of the more than 606,000 ballots sent out to voters since Friday, as of 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The numbers provided by the state Board of Elections show 79 additional ballots have been returned but not yet accepted.
Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the state agency tasked with administering elections, said these dozens of unaccepted ballots could stem from voters improperly filling out their ballot, counties processing information that has not yet made its way into the statewide database or technical procedures that have resulted in “spoiled” ballot requests, which is most common among people who make multiple requests for absentee ballots due to a change of address.
“There is no reason at all to be concerned whatsoever,” Gannon said.
As of Tuesday evening, North Carolina’s 7.1 million registered voters have requested nearly 707,000 absentee ballots.
Those who complete an absentee ballot are required to have one witness with them at the time they fill it out. That person must sign the witness certification before it can be properly returned. Mismatched sig
natures could also prompt a ballot to be rejected.
In other developments:
■ An Air Force veteran, a former Trump official and a combat nurse are among the Republican candidates for New Hampshire’s two congressional seats hoping to take on two Democratic incumbents in the November general election. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu easily defeated two longshots on the GOP ballot on Tuesday.
■ Longtime U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin, the first lawmaker with quadriplegia to be elected to Congress, faces Democratic challenger Dylan Conley in Tuesday’s Rhode Island primary. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed sailed right past Tuesday’s Democratic primary unopposed and will face Republican Allen Waters in a quest
for a fifth term in the November general election.
■ Georgia’s top elections official said Tuesday that his office has identified about 1,000 cases of “potential double voting” in the June primary election — a felony he’s determined to see prosecuted. These voters submitted absentee ballots but also voted in person, a problem that happened across 100 Georgia counties, and election officials didn’t catch them in time to keep the second votes from being tallied, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.
■ A state Supreme Court decision Tuesday cleared the way for election officials to print ranked choice voting ballots in Maine’s presidential election, but it’s still unclear whether the voting system will be used in that contest.