Mail-in voting in North Carolina will be delayed by at least a few days — and possibly weeks — due to a court ruling Friday in the lawsuit over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s name should appear on the ballot for the presidential race.

But the fast-moving legal fight isn't over yet. The State Board of Elections asked the North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday afternoon to step in, and overturn a court from Friday morning that itself overturned a separate ruling from Thursday.

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State officials were supposed to begin sending out mail-in ballots Friday to the 130,000 North Carolina voters who have already requested them. But the North Carolina Court of Appeals issued a last-minute ruling Friday morning, ordering elections officials to hold off and to start re-printing ballots without Kennedy's name on them.

State officials have said that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and could delay the start of mail-in voting for weeks, blowing well past the deadline Friday set by state law. They made those points to the Supreme Court, asking for a reversal of the Court of Appeals order so that they can go ahead and send out the ballots they've already printed with Kennedy's name. They also question Kennedy's true motives, noting that even as he claims he will face "irreparable harm" if his name appears on the ballot in North Carolina, he's also fighting separate legal battles to make sure his name does appear on the ballot in other states including New York and Mississippi.

Kennedy "fails to explain why remaining on the ballot in North Carolina is inherently harmful, but appearing on the ballot in New York and Mississippi poses no such harm," state elections officials argued to the Supreme Court.

"Voting in North Carolina was supposed to begin today," they added. "Our State’s elections officials have gone to admirable lengths to ensure that voters across North Carolina will receive their ballots on time and enjoy the full two months for voting mandated by state law."

Michael Bitzer, a Catawba College political science professor, said the data shows any issues with mail-in voting this year would probably be more likely to impact Democrats than Republicans.

"It wasn't that long ago that registered Republicans actually dominated absentee by mail voting," he said. "But they have been slowly moving away. And with Trump having called into question that kind of vote method, they've moved even further away from absentee by mail voting, and gone to in-person voting."

The Court of Appeals order Friday morning didn't explain why the judges overturned a trial court ruling against Kennedy just one day prior, from Wake County Superior Court Judge Rebecca Holt. Holt had found that that any harm that might be done to him by remaining on the ballot would be "minimal" compared to the harm done to the state if forced to re-print the ballots.

The Court of Appeals disagreed with Holt and ordered her to write a new ruling favoring Kennedy, but elections officials are hoping the Supreme Court believes she got it right the first time.

Soon after the ruling Friday, the State Board of Elections sent a memo to all 100 county elections boards — who are the ones who physically possess the ballots that were supposed to start going out by now — telling them not to destroy any of those ballots, in case they do end up winning the legal battle in the end.

"Continue to hold your outgoing absentee ballots," elections board general counsel Paul Cox wrote in the memo.

Kennedy's back-and-forth

Kennedy's erstwhile candidacy has given elections officials — and voters — whiplash over the past two months.

He originally had to fight to get onto the ballot, gathering the required thousands of signatures to form a new political party in North Carolina and then convincing the State Board of Elections that his signature-gathering effort had been legitimate. Once the elections board put him on the ballot the North Carolina Democratic Party sued, trying to kick him off the ballot due to fears he might take more votes from Democrat Kamala Harris than from Republican Donald Trump in this year's election. Kennedy won that lawsuit less than a month ago, and was allowed to remain on the ballot.

But gradually, polling began showing he was actually taking more voters away from Trump than from Harris. Kennedy then dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump. He also tried getting off the ballot in North Carolina, a key swing state, fearing that if his name remained on the ballot he could hurt Trump's chances. But his new We The People Party didn't ask North Carolina officials to take him off the ballot until days after he announced he was dropping out. By that time, many counties around the state had already begun printing their ballots, and the State Board of Elections denied the request to start over and print new ballots without his name.

So Kennedy sued, now backed by prominent Republican attorneys, to ask state courts to force the elections board to reprint the ballots even though it would mean missing Friday's deadline. Phil Strach, his lead attorney in North Carolina, said that leaving Kennedy's name on the ballot could confuse voters and, potentially, lead to people accidentally throwing away their votes on a candidate who they might not know had dropped out and endorsed Trump instead.

Holt, a Republican, denied Kennedy's request at trial on Thursday. But now that the Court of Appeals has overturned her ruling, the case could go up to the North Carolina Supreme Court if the Board of Elections continues fighting. The elections board has a Democratic majority. Both appellate courts have Republican majorities.

Bitzer said that one potential danger to Trump if Kennedy stays on the ballot in North Carolina is if people decide to vote for him, even despite knowing he dropped out of the race, simply to make a statement. That would likely only be a small sliver of the vote, but elections here are often decided by thin margins. In 2020 Trump won North Carolina by just 1.5% of the vote.

"Are there enough stalwarts — you know, people that are firmly committed to Robert Kennedy, and only Robert Kennedy — to really make a difference?" Bitzer said. "... I think it's going to be fascinating to watch over the next 60 days."