- Mail voting is convenient for some voters but comes with security risks
- Accepting local mail ballots after election day caused confusion and protests at election board meetings
- North Carolina now requires most mail ballots to be submitted by election day, but security concerns remain
This is part of a series of articles about problems with the 2020 election in North Carolina, most of which were detailed in the John Locke Foundation’s report “What Happened in 2020?,” and changes that have taken place since then. The other parts of the series deal with collusive lawsuit settlements altering election law, “Zuck bucks” (private election administration funding), and same-day registration “ghost voters.”
In the 2020 election, an unprecedented 18 percent of ballots were cast by mail in North Carolina. While election officials handled the influx well, there were problems with ballots accepted after election day and ongoing concerns about mail ballot security.
Balancing Convenience and Security with Mail Ballots
North Carolina is one of 36 states (plus the District of Columbia) with “no-excuse absentee voting,” meaning that a voter can choose to vote by mail even if he or she is home during election day.
Mail voting can be convenient for some voters, especially if they are elderly, sick, or disabled. It is also necessary for deployed military personnel, Americans living overseas, or those who will otherwise not be in their home counties during the voting period.
There are disadvantages to mail voting, however.
Mail ballots are vulnerable to ballot harvesting (also known as ballot trafficking) once they leave the security of election facilities. Steven F. Huefner, a law professor from Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University, wrote that ballot harvesters can:
- destroy or discard ballots from those whom they believe voted for the “wrong” candidate
- collect ballots in unsealed envelopes or open sealed envelopes to alter votes or fill in blank portions of ballots in which the voter did not vote in every race
- collect unmarked ballots and mark them themselves
- improperly influence voters while completing their ballots (such electioneering is illegal in polling places)
Recent history has shown the danger of ballot harvesting is not just theoretical. In 2018, North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District race was overturned due to concerns that the outcome was affected by trafficked mail ballots. That practice was more widespread in Bladen County than widely reported, involving at least two organizations and stretching back through several elections. Similar if smaller schemes have been uncovered in Yancey, Swain, and Hoke counties.
Mail Voting Surged in 2020 but Not Without Problems
North Carolina has one of the longest absentee voting periods and was the first state to transmit mail ballots to voters in 2020, sending the first batch out on September 4. The proportion of ballots sent by mail surged to about four times that of previous presidential elections (see Table 1).
Table 1: Proportion of Votes by Ballot Type in Presidential Elections, 2008–20
Source: North Carolina State Board of Elections
The good news is that no evidence has been found of the large-scale ballot harvesting in North Carolina in 2020 that plagued other recent elections.
There were problems with mail voting in North Carolina, however.
According to data from the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE), almost a third of all mail ballots were not counted (see Table 2). They include the 18.8 percent of all mail ballots that were spoiled, including marred (torn or defaced) ballots replaced by new mail ballots or ballots discarded if the voter decided to vote in person.
Also, 12.3 percent of mail ballots were unaccounted for. Those are ballots voters neither returned nor spoiled.
An additional 1.1 percent of ballots (15,626) received by election officials were not counted for various reasons, including incomplete witness information or other missing information that the voter did not correct.
Table 2: Final Status of All North Carolina Mail Ballots in the 2020 General Election
Source: North Carolina State Board of Elections
The not-counted category also includes 1,084 ballots “Returned After Deadline,” even though SBE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell used a collusive lawsuit settlement to stretch the deadline for officials to receive mail ballots up to nine days after election day.
Having the deadline for mail ballots after election day created problems (page 96):
To deal with the reoccurring problems of ballots missing postmarks, the SBE had to instruct county election boards to “conduct research with the USPS or commercial carrier to determine the date it was in the custody of USPS or the commercial carrier.”
That confusion over postmarks and which ballots received after election day should count led to protests at county boards of elections meetings after the 2020 election.
The General Assembly Addresses a Problem with Mail Voting, but Work Remains
Locke advocated for mail ballot reform, including making statements at the General Assembly calling on lawmakers to make election day the deadline for most mail ballots. That reform was part of a large election reform bill the General Assembly passed over Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto in October 2023. North Carolina is now one of 32 states with a deadline of election day or before for mail ballots.
The General Assembly also considered two reforms to help address security concerns over mail ballots. The first is a bill that would have, among other things, required county boards of elections to “use signature verification software to check the signatures of voters noted on executed absentee ballots before those ballots are accepted by the county boards.”
Another bill would have added a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID for all voters. The state constitution requires identification only for “voters offering to vote in person” and excludes those voting by mail. North Carolina already requires voter ID for mail voting by statute, but having it in the constitution would protect it from challenges in state court.
Both bills passed the North Carolina Senate but were not taken up by the House.
The General Assembly should also consider moving up the deadline to request mail ballots to lessen the chance that voters will submit their ballots too late to be counted. See pages 120–122 of Locke’s Policy Solutions guide for details.
Having mail ballots due by election day is a good start, but the General Assembly can do more to make absentee voting by mail more secure.
