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More than 1,600 ballots thrown out in NC primary elections

More than 1,600 ballots were rejected in the March 5 primary election, according to data from the North Carolina Board of Elections. This was the first statewide election since 2014 to require voter ID, due to a court ruling that enacted the law after a long legal battle, as well as the first to implement a tighter deadline for mail-in ballots.

Posted 2024-03-20T14:31:02+00:00 - Updated 2024-03-22T20:19:32+00:00

As the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, North Carolina voters are still more interested in voting by mail than they were before the pandemic. But they’re nowhere near as likely to vote by mail as they were during the height of the pandemic in 2020.

Laura Leslie

, WRAL Capitol bureau chief

More than 1,600 ballots were thrown out in the March 5 primary, according to data from the North Carolina Board of Elections.

This was the first statewide election since 2014 to require voter ID, due to a court ruling that enacted the law after a long legal battle, as well as the first to implement a tighter deadline for mail-in ballots.

Until 2023, mail-in ballots in North Carolina that were postmarked by Election Day were accepted via mail delivery until the following Friday, three days later. The grace period was intended to offset possible delays in mail processing.

In 2023, Republican state lawmakers authored several changes to election laws in the name of election integrity. One of those changes did away with the three-day grace period, setting 7:30 p.m. Election Day as the new deadline for receiving mail-in ballots except from military or overseas voters.

According to data from the state board of elections, 1124 ballots were rejected in the 2024 primary because they were received after the new deadline. That’s an increase of 324 over the 2020 primary, when 800 ballots were rejected because they arrived after the grace period.

Elections board data also shows that 473 provisional ballots were rejected in 2024 because the voter lacked voter ID.

In 413 cases, voters did not fill out an exception form claiming they did not have an ID. They could have returned with their ID to their county elections office by canvass day to have their ballot counted, but did not.

In the other 60 cases, the provisional voters claimed exceptions to voter ID due to reasonable impediment or natural disaster, but those exceptions were rejected by their local election board. It’s not yet clear why those exceptions were denied.

In another 695 cases, provisional ballots were accepted without voter ID.

Of those, 551 voters successfully claimed exceptions for reasonable impediment, 3 claimed natural disaster, 4 were granted exception for religious objections, and 137 voters who had forgotten their ID brought it to the county elections board before canvass day.