Did you get a mail-in ballot request form? Look it over, because it may not be valid.
.JPG "As of 4 p.m. Friday, 261,822 absentee ballots – a 59 percent increase from 2014 with 164,233 absentee ballots – had been issued for this year’s midterm election in South Carolina.")
Up to 80,000 North Carolinians may have been sent request forms for mail-in ballots that are illegitimate, state elections officials said Tuesday.
Due to coronavirus and public health concerns, officials expect voting by mail — also known as absentee voting — to skyrocket in this November’s elections. And the legislature is on track to pass a bill that would make it easier for people to request and submit mail-in ballots this year only, due to coronavirus.
But thousands of people around the state who were sent an absentee ballot request form in the mail should double check to make sure it’s actually valid, the N.C. State Board of Elections said in a news release Tuesday.
The issues stem from mailers sent by a liberal-leaning Washington, D.C. group called The Center for Voter Information, whose goal is to increase voter participation among minorities, young people and single women.
According to state elections officials, the 80,000 absentee ballot request forms that group mailed to voters across North Carolina had some information already filled out. That’s a problem. The N.C. General Assembly passed a law last year banning elections officials from accepting any such pre-filled forms.
Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the state elections board, said officials will try to respond to any such invalid forms they receive by mailing the voter back with a letter explaining what happened, plus a blank absentee ballot request form. That form will be valid if they fill it out and send it back in.
Brinson Bell said that after state officials informed The Center for Voter Information about the legal problems with their mailers, the group stopped sending out the pre-filled versions. The group now plans to send out an additional 400,000 mailers with blank request forms that will be valid, Brinson Bell said.
She cautioned any other political groups planning to send mailers out to voters, ahead of the 2020 elections, to make sure they’re up-to-date on state laws.
“We will do our best to review mailings and other voting information distributed by third parties when requested and when resources allow for it,” she said. “However, it’s ultimately up to advocacy groups to ensure their mailings do not confuse voters or potentially affect their ability to vote in an election.”
Pushing for increased voting by mail isn’t the only goal of The Center for Voter Information . It also wants to get more voters registered — but has faced criticism in other states for its work on that front, too.
In April, the group announced it would be targeting 20 states, including North Carolina, in a voter registration push. It said that there are 2.2 million North Carolinians who are eligible to vote but have not registered, and that 70% of them are young people, unmarried women and/or minorities.
NPR reported in February that the same group has previously been criticized by elections officials in multiple other states because some of its mailings have gone to people who aren’t actually eligible to vote, or who are already registered, leading to confusion.
In Wisconsin, for instance, the state’s top elections official told NPR she got a letter from the group telling her she wasn’t registered to vote — even though she had been for years.
In April, when the group announced that North Carolina was among its outreach targets for 2020, Center for Voter Information founder Page Gardner said in a press release that coronavirus concerns make it important for people to know about the option to vote by mail.
“The future of our democracy is at stake,” Gardner said. “We have a major opportunity to close the gap on voter registration and make sure the electorate is as representative as the country as a whole.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Did you get a mail-in ballot request form? Look it over, because it may not be valid.."
