Deficient NC absentee ballots frozen pending further rulings
A lawyer for North Carolina's State Board of Elections said Friday that time is running out to process 10,000 absentee ballots with incomplete witness information and other errors after state and federal judges put additional freezes on the process.
Counties had already been under instructions issued Oct. 4 by the state elections board to set deficient absentee ballots aside and take no further action while multiple lawsuits over absentee voting rules unfold.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued a stay Thursday night that froze updated rules announced last month for dealing with absentee ballot problems through at least Monday, pending further legal arguments in a state lawsuit. Earlier in the day, U.S. District Judge William Osteen also ruled to maintain a freeze issued by a federal court on the same rules through the end of Friday.
The state elections board will seek to have the state court stay removed so counties can begin asking voters to correct deficient ballots, said Alex Peters, a lawyer in the attorney general' s office who's representing the state board.
The s t at e esti mates t hat 10,000 absentee ballots with various deficiencies are on hold, and those voters can't even be notified unless the state and federal courts allow the state to move forward with updated absentee ballot rules, Peters said at a hearing Friday morning in the state lawsuit.
“The current situation i s paralysis,” he told a j udge, adding: “There is simply not time to keep litigating this.”
The State Board of Elections advised counties Thursday that more detailed guidelines on dealing with deficient ballots would be issued after the lawsuits are resolved.