New NC voting rules delayed, but state elections board to consider workaround

Enough people objected to new state election rules governing photo identification, conduct at the polls, recounts and absentee voting to delay them until after the midterm elections. 

The Rules Review Commission unanimously approved a slate of Board of Elections rules last week, but at least 10 people wrote opposition letters for each one. Those objections mean that implementation is delayed until the legislature can review them during its next regular season. 

However, the state board is still considering making some immediate changes in how absentee ballots are handled. The board is meeting Wednesday to talk about directions it gives county boards of election about absentee ballots in “numbered memos.”

Numbered memos are less formal than administrative rules. They’ve been used for many years to set policy for county boards. The state board had been working to replace some of those many numbered memos with formal rules. 

“With the delayed effective date of the rules, those numbered memos that would have been superseded by the rules now need to be updated,” board spokesman Jason Tyson said in an email. 

The board’s Wednesday agenda as of Tuesday afternoon did not include what absentee ballot directives members will consider updating. 

The postponed rules that are now delayed detail how county elections officials handle mail-in ballots returned with mistakes, such as missing signatures on ballot envelopes or ballots that come back in unsealed envelopes. The rules set out which mistakes voters can correct and which mistakes would require voters to cast new ballots. Even without the new rules, state board directives to counties have covered these topics.

Proposed ban on amplified music outside NC polling places draws criticism

One of the proposed rules would rewrite a directive on how to handle ballots that are returned in the wrong envelopes. 

Under existing rules, counties are able to count ballots if they aren’t returned in an inner envelope, but are returned in a sealed outer envelope. Ballots that are sent to the same address but are returned in the wrong envelopes are also counted, because couples sometimes accidentally switch envelopes when they return their completed ballots. 

Republicans sued over having those ballots automatically count. A legal settlement required the board to reconsider those directives.

Under the proposed rules, ballots arriving in the wrong envelopes would require county election officials to send voters written notice of the problems and contact them by phone or email if possible. If voters say in writing that they sent the ballots the way the board received them, their votes would count. If voters say in writing that they didn’t send their ballots that way, those ballots won’t count. 

Opposition letters also delayed rules on photo ID, recounts, and conduct at voting sites. 

Some of the proposals drew significant public blowback, especially one that would allow provisional ballots to be thrown out if a simple majority on county boards believes that voters lied about why they don’t have photo ID.

As it stands, throwing out ballots on that basis requires unanimous county election board approval. The change would allow Republican majorities alone on county boards to reject ballots, which critics said would inject partisanship into the outcomes. 

The rule on amplified noise outside polling places drew critics who said it was aimed at stifling enthusiasm among Black and brown voters and young voters who seek to make going to the polls fun community events.