The start of voting in North Carolina, which was scheduled to begin Friday with the mailing of absentee ballots, will be further delayed to let legal proceedings play out after an appeals court ordered the state to remove former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot.
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court Friday afternoon.
In a brief to the state Supreme Court, lawyers for the elections board wrote that “the North Carolina Court of Appeals has thrown our State’s elections process into chaos.”
While the board says that it has begun the process of recoding ballots without Kennedy’s name in the meantime, it argues that a quick reversal from the state Supreme Court would “avoid most of the irreparable harm” caused by the lower court ruling.
Kennedy dropped out of the race last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump, but North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled State Board of Elections voted along party lines last week to reject Kennedy’s request to remove his name from the ballot, saying that it wouldn’t be practical to reprint ballots and delay the start of voting.
Kennedy challenged the decision in court, and a judge ruled Thursday that his name should remain on the ballot but ordered the state to delay sending ballots out until noon on Friday to give the former candidate time to appeal, leading to the new order by the appeals court Friday morning.
Kennedy scored another court victory in a battleground state Friday when a Michigan appeals court ordered state election officials to remove his name from the ballot, overruling a lower court’s decision. The appeals court ruled that state officials had improperly denied Kennedy’s request to be struck from the ballot after he suspended his presidential campaign.
A spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, told CNN Friday that the decision would be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Kennedy is also challenging the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s decision to keep him on the ballot in the Midwestern battleground.
Since endorsing Trump, Kennedy has sought to withdraw his name from the ballot in competitive states in order to boost the former president’s chances of winning there.
Initially, Kennedy said that his supporters in states seen as safe for either party should still vote for him. However, in a fundraising message Thursday, he reversed that position, telling his supporters to back Trump “no matter what state you live in.”
Earlier Friday, Michael Dickerson, the director of the Mecklenburg County election board told CNN that county election officials were in a “holding pattern,” while the state board decided whether to appeal.
“We’re told to not send anything out just yet – ‘Do not send ballots out today’ – with the new court order,” Dickerson said. “We’ll wait and see. (The) state board wants to see if they’re going to appeal this, and if they decide to appeal, we’ll see how far that takes it and how much more we have to go.”
If the Court of Appeals order stands, counties would need to go through the full process with ballots before any can be sent out.
“I would hope that we would be able to get this out in less than two weeks. I think the state was saying a 10-day delay. If that’s the case, I think we could make that work,” Dickerson said. “We could start getting the ballots out. The most important thing is getting the overseas and military ballots out to those folks.”
“It’s starting over. I remove the party, I remove the names, I then regenerate ballots. I then have to test every ballot. I have to have the state approve it and test everything. And then I have to reprint the 20,000 that I got going out,” Dickerson added, noting that this would be taking place as additional requests for ballots come in as well.
The state board said in a news release Friday that staff would be working through the weekend to start the process of redoing ballots without Kennedy’s name. According to the board, there are 2,348 different ballot styles in the state for the election and more than 2.9 million ballots had already been printed before Friday’s order.
State board executive director Karen Brinson Bell instructed counties Friday afternoon to prepare to act on the new ballots, but she also noted that they should preserve their existing materials that include Kennedy’s name, in case the state’s appeal is successful.
According to the state board, it could take 12-13 days to reprint ballots. Under federal law, ballots for overseas and military voters must be sent by September 21, but the state board says it may request a waiver if the process can’t be completed by then.
More than 136,300 voters in the state have requested absentee ballots, including about 12,700 military and overseas voters, the state board said.
Brinson Bell also told counties that they should wait to send out any ballots until a uniform date is set for the entire state.
“The voting period should be the same for all voters to vote absentee by mail,” Brinson Bell wrote.
Dickerson said earlier Friday he wanted to reassure voters that neither the flurry of legal activity nor the delays would affect the integrity of the actual ballot creation process.
“We’ll get it done,” he said. “We’re going to make sure everything is working perfectly, no matter what way we send the ballots out or if we have to stop and start over again.”
“We’re confident in our practices that we have here that we’ll make it work, and it will be a great election for the voters of North Carolina,” Dickerson said.
This story has been updated with additional information.
