NC elections officials alter mail ballot rules just before they’re mailed out

The North Carolina State Board of Elections approved new guidelines Friday regarding mail-in ballots, hours before those same ballots were sent to voters.

The new guidelines pertain to the standards the board will use to decide whether to count a mail-in ballot — including requiring officials to disqualify a ballot if its signature does not match the name assigned to the application on the return envelope.

Other changes specify that only a near relative or legal guardian can deliver a voter’s mail-in ballot in person on their behalf, and they require officials to disqualify ballots if more than one is included in a return envelope.

The new guidelines were debated between board officials , with the two Democrats dissenting.

“To my mind, we’re doing an end run around the process that we said we wanted to do,” Democratic member Siobhan Millen said at the board’s meeting. “It may not affect you as you’re filling it out, but it affects whether your ballot counts — that’s huge. So, an effort to say this is just a process thing, I think is incorrect.”

Stacy Eggers, a Republican member of the board, defended the new standards, saying, “This is simply guidance, updated guidance, I might add, as to what the board and staff at the county level will do and how they will process things.”

The guidelines were approved as numbered memos after similar rulings from the board couldn’t go into effect — despite the state’s Rules Review Commission unanimously approving them — due to a provision in state law that delays such rules if 10 or more formal objections are received.

The previous rulings must be decided by the North Carolina Legislature in its next session.

The first batch of ballots was initially promised to be sent out to more than 46,000 voters, even as the ballot’s validity is still being decided at the federal level.

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to clear the way for the U.S. Postal Service to implement President Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting in time for the midterms.

The service’s plan would mandate that states’ mail-in ballots meet design requirements — such as unique barcodes and an official logo — and require election officials to upload lists of voters who are eligible to vote by mail; otherwise, the Postal Service will refuse to deliver ballots.

In a filing last week , North Carolina Assistant Deputy Attorney General Marc Brunton argued against the service’s rules because of “the very short time available and the untested technology that the Rule relies on.”

He argued that the mail-in ballot system was “particularly important” for parts of western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which hit the region in 2024 and reportedly did $60 billion in damage.