North Carolina Absentee Ballots Delayed After Fight Over RFK Jr.
Posted on 09/17/2024
North Carolina?s 100 counties have begun reprinting November election ballots and will send them about two weeks late to absentee voters, the outcome of a messy political impasse over whether to remove the onetime independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the ballot.
The ruling by the state Supreme Court that mandated his last-minute removal from the ballot was a victory for Mr. Kennedy, who dropped out of the presidential race last month. And it may achieve his goal of aiding the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump, who was endorsed by Mr. Kennedy and could pick up much of his support.
But it will prove a major headache for county election boards, which now must reprint millions of ballots that must be tailored to 2,348 arrangements of candidates and ballot measures, depending on where voters live. That could cost upward of $1 million statewide, according to a rough estimate by the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Mr. Kennedy?s effort to remove his name from the North Carolina electoral landscape is just one in a series of political maneuvers playing out in several states over which party gains or loses from his presence on the ballot.
In North Carolina, he is being opposed by Democrats who wanted him to remain on ballots but were seeking to remove him only a month ago, when it appeared that he might siphon a sliver of Democratic votes that otherwise would go to Vice President Kamala Harris.
?I?m reminded of the old saying that politics makes strange bedfellows, and I guess it depends on what night you?re talking about,? said J. Michael Bitzer, an expert on North Carolina politics at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C.
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The ruling by the state Supreme Court that mandated his last-minute removal from the ballot was a victory for Mr. Kennedy, who dropped out of the presidential race last month. And it may achieve his goal of aiding the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump, who was endorsed by Mr. Kennedy and could pick up much of his support.
But it will prove a major headache for county election boards, which now must reprint millions of ballots that must be tailored to 2,348 arrangements of candidates and ballot measures, depending on where voters live. That could cost upward of $1 million statewide, according to a rough estimate by the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Mr. Kennedy?s effort to remove his name from the North Carolina electoral landscape is just one in a series of political maneuvers playing out in several states over which party gains or loses from his presence on the ballot.
In North Carolina, he is being opposed by Democrats who wanted him to remain on ballots but were seeking to remove him only a month ago, when it appeared that he might siphon a sliver of Democratic votes that otherwise would go to Vice President Kamala Harris.
?I?m reminded of the old saying that politics makes strange bedfellows, and I guess it depends on what night you?re talking about,? said J. Michael Bitzer, an expert on North Carolina politics at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C.
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