gerry-cohen

We had lots of questions after the state Supreme Court ruled on Monday, in a 4-3 ruling, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name needed to be removed from NC ballots, which were already printed and set to go out last Friday. 

As Kirk Ross noted yesterday, state law requires absentee ballots to be sent out 60 days prior to an election, which in this cycle was last Friday, September 6. That was put on hold when an as yet unidentified three member panel of the state Court of Appeals ruled in Kennedy’s favor. The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the ruling on Monday.

Now absentee ballots will go out at some point in the next few weeks, but we don’t know exactly when.

So we turned to Gerry Cohen, our go-to when questions about North Carolina election law come up. Cohen worked at the North Carolina General Assembly for 37 years doing election law, has run for elected office four times (and served twice, for six years.) He currently serves as a member of the Wake County Board of Elections.

Gerry, how is the NC Supreme Court’s ruling that all printed ballots in the state must be reprinted affecting Wake County?

Wake County coded and proofed ballots all day Saturday and Sunday and got state approval. Saturday we got printing quotes and once the decision came down to reprint without RFK we ordered ballots around 8 pm Sunday. Wake has paid $66,000 for the ballots that must be discarded, the re-order price is $85,000.  That does not count staff time, overtime, and temporary employees to prepare the outgoing packages. 

But our vendor two weeks ago was just printing for N.C. Now that vendor is printing for N.C. SC. and VA and will have to run three shifts. Our quotes are 25% higher than we paid for the first run early last week because the printer has to add a shift. We got test ballots Wednesday morning, now we have to do mandatory testing of the ballots and tabulators. Sample ballots are posted online. Meanwhile we wait for the absentee ballots themselves. 

We had like 22,000 [ballots] completely ready to send Sept 6, but Wake is getting 500 requests a day. So we might be close to 30,000 to send out hopefully by the end of next week. To assemble the mailings we may have 60 people working 4 days starting hopefully this weekend. Last week we assembled envelopes 12 hours a day for three days. 

How about other counties?

A few examples: Cumberland like Wake is paying the same 25% premium for reprinting ballots. Cherokee County must pay thousands to print new ballots, might require county commissioners to meet, county manager urges NCGA to reimburse counties for expenses.

What’s inside each ballot mailed to voters?

Each ballot envelope has inside it two other envelopes, 4 pages of instructions, an ID exception form and the ballot. Wake has 181 different ballots, the most in the state, and each envelope has to get the right ballot for that voter. Plus there are address labels and barcoding labels to affix. Eventually our mail house contractor will meter the envelopes to affix postage. Don’t know mail out date yet. 

How many people have requested absentee ballots?

The NC State Board of Elections has started each day posting absentee request statistics at this website, where the last file is the most recent. 

NC absentee ballot requests through Sept 10 153,831, up 7,228 from Sept 9. Wake Co now 26,153, up 2,162 from previous day. Tyrrell County remains at one request

10% are military or overseas.

When will absentee ballots start being mailed out?

We don’t know. Here’s the latest press release from the NC State Board of Elections.

When does early voting start?

October 17 and ends November 2.

When do absentee ballots need to be mailed back?

They need to be at the county board of elections by 11/5.

Who pays for this added expense of reprinting all of the ballots?

The Supreme Court said the state would incur considerable expense, but this shows they know as little about election administration financing as they know about elections. The counties pay 100% of the cost of printing ballots in N.C., and all the personnel costs and overtime. Now due to a new state law, counties are forbidden from getting private donations to help. (So many counties elections boards may have to ask for supplemental funding from the county commissioners.) 

Only the county board of commissioners, the N.C. General Assembly or Congress can pay for this. For practical purposes here, it’s the county board of commissioners.

Melody Kramer is a Peabody-award winning journalist whose work has appeared on NPR and member stations around the country, as well as in publications ranging from National Geographic to Esquire Magazine....