Election update: In Mecklenburg, absentee ballot count continues
Election officials in Mecklenburg County on Friday began counting absentee ballots that meet the state’s Election Day postmark requirement but have not yet been added to the unofficial tally in North Carolina.
Under state law, which was upheld last month by the U.S. Supreme Court, absentee ballots are accepted until Nov. 12, as long as the ballot is postmarked by Election Day. Based on the number of uncounted ballots in North Carolina, President Donald Trump’s tentative lead over Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state is unlikely to change, the Charlotte Observer and other outlets have reported.
Mecklenburg County elections Director Michael Dickerson said the board could count up to 5,000 absentee ballots which were postmarked by Election Day. If additional ballots arrive by mail after Friday and meet the postmark and signature requirements, those will also be reviewed and counted. The absentee ballots being counted, Dickerson said, included several hundred sent in from members of the military serving overseas.
The process, which takes place at the county’s election board office just outside uptown Charlotte, unfolded with little fanfare and without protests Friday night, as of 6 p.m. The meeting was open to the public and observers, as well as members of the news media, were in the room as board members sat around several tables.
Outside, Bessie Rhoades, a Charlotte voter who said she supports Trump, said she and others are praying for the president a second term. Rhoades, who said she’s worked for politicians previously in Washington, D.C., attended the county elections board meeting Friday to just “observe the process.”
“I’ve been following a lot of the news and I’m concerned about how a lot of the absentee ballots and the mail-in ballots have been counted,” she said, adding that she felt the elections process in North Carolina has been smooth.
Inside the board meeting room, one elections official reviewed an absentee by-mail ballot with a magnifying glass. After review, the ballots are processed in a machine for tabulation.
Up to 99,000 absentee ballots may still trickle in in North Carolina and be counted. But the figure is likely to be much lower as some of those voters who requested ballots may have skipped voting altogether while others may have opted to vote in person and their absentee ballot would not be counted.
In North Carolina, Trump received more votes than Biden during early voting and on Election Day. Biden received more than twice as many votes among absentee ballots that were mailed in before Election Day, according to unofficial results reported so far by the state Board of Elections.
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis leads Democrat Cal Cunningham by an even larger margin and the remaining uncounted ballots are unlikely to swing the race Cunningham’s way.
But that hasn’t stopped some top Republicans from demanding that the presidential and Senate race be called even as the voting counting process continues.
Buoyed by Trump’s own unproven and unspecified accusations that Democrats are “rigging” or “stealing” the election, some in North Carolina are protesting election officials completing the count of legal votes. Yet that is precisely what officials in most North Carolina counties will do next week as election boards accept the last of mail-in ballots and prepare for statewide canvassing of the vote.
This is a developing story. Check back for more details.
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 6:10 PM.
