Uncertainty over the electoral process in North Carolina

The only thing North Carolina election officials are certain of right now is that they will not meet the legal start date for mailing requested mail-in ballots.

This year, as required by state law, the start date was last Friday, September 6, 60 days before Election Day.

More than 130,000 voters, including thousands in the military and overseas, had already requested mail-in ballots for this year's general election when the process was halted. And more than 1.7 million ballots had already been printed in time for the mailing process to begin on Sept. 6.

But a last-minute lawsuit filed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stopped the process so that his name could be removed from the ballot in North Carolina – a move he had also tried, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, in other swing states.

RFK Jr. first wanted to be on the NC ballot, then again not

RFK Jr. was the preferred candidate of the We the People party, which had petitioned to put him on the North Carolina ballot, despite concerns among Democrats in particular that Kennedy was simply trying to circumvent the state's higher legal hurdles for independent candidates in the election.

Shortly after Kennedy was placed on the North Carolina ballot following a 4-1 vote by the state election board, Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign for a third party on August 23 and subsequently endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump.

After Kennedy suspended – and did not end – his campaign, he officially asked the state election board for his dismissal in a letter dated August 27.

But with ballots already printed and 10 days remaining until the legal start of mailing ballots, the Democratic majority on the Elections Committee rejected RFK Jr.'s request, overruling the Republican minority on the committee by a 3-2 vote.

In a whirlwind of legal wrangling, a state Supreme Court judge upheld the committee's denial of Kennedy's request, but the North Carolina Court of Appeals overruled that decision.

Court majority: Voters need accurate information

This repeal has now been confirmed by the state Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling.

Justice Trey Allen, one of the court's five conservatives, referred to the free-choice clause in the North Carolina Constitution on behalf of the majority. Citing case law, Allen wrote that the clause protects voters “from interference and intimidation in the electoral process,” the judge said.

Allen further argued that the state constitution guarantees voters accurate information about the candidates, including removing Kennedy's name from the ballot.

The court majority also stated that the election committee staff had sufficient time and there were indications from the Kennedy campaign team to interrupt the election preparation process and remove his name.

Dissenting judge said court did not follow law

Justice Allison Riggs, joined by fellow Democrat Anita Earls, dissented, calling the appeals court's order to reprint ballots – and the resulting delay in mailing them – “outrageous and unjustified.” Moreover, Riggs wrote, the ruling was damaging to “the state's voters, who were guaranteed 60 days by their elected legislature to receive and cast mail-in ballots, and to the overworked and underpaid state employees who work as poll workers at a time when these services expose those state employees to harassment and danger.”

The two Democratic Supreme Court justices were not the only ones to dissent.

While calling his conservative colleagues' analysis of the case “thoughtful” and “entirely reasonable,” Judge Richard Dietz wrote, “I believe our election laws support the determination of the State Election Board.”

Dietz added that in his view, “the court's job is to follow the law as it is written,” and that in his view, “our election laws allowed the State Election Board to refuse to print new ballots.”

According to a statement, the state election board is now preparing for the possibility that North Carolina will not be able to meet the 45-day federal deadline for distributing ballots of military personnel and those charged overseas to voters because of the order to reprint the ballots. This year, the deadline is Sept. 21.

The panel's staff said they had begun discussions with the U.S. Department of Defense to seek a possible exception to that deadline if necessary.

North Carolina has 2,348 different ballot types statewide for the 2024 general election. Each ballot type contains a specific combination of elections in which a voter is eligible to vote based on where they reside.