N.C. resumes processing of faulty ballots

North Carolina issued new guidance Monday for counties to proceed with dealing with more than 10,000 deficient absentee ballots, which have been in limbo because of ongoing court battles over a witness requirement for voting by mail.

The state Board of Elections issued a directive telling counties to immediately resume notifying voters whose ballots arrive with a range of deficiencies on how to fix the problem or start the process over. The memo tells counties that voters who mail in ballots without a witness signature must fill out a new ballot and have it witnessed again. But the state board said counties can allow voters to fix more minor problems such as a missing witness address by returning a signed affidavit.

County boards should immediately begin contacting voters whose ballots were set aside due to pending court battles and enter information about the ballots into a state database, according to an email sent Monday by the board’s general counsel, Katelyn Love.

The state board had told counties on Oct. 4 to set aside ballots with various deficiencies and take no further action pending proceedings in a tangle of state and federal lawsuits over absentee ballot rules. A key issue was implementation of a state law requiring that absentee voters have another adult witness their ballot and sign the outer envelope.

The state board was sued by voting rights advocates over absentee requirements, prompting a late September revision that eased rules for fixing ballots with incomplete witness information. But state and national Republican leaders then went to court to challenge the revisions, arguing that those would dilute the voices of voters who had already cast ballots under prior rules that were stricter.