Where Things Stand In North Carolina's Legal Battles
With two new rulings in the past 24 hours, the legal battle over North Carolina’s absentee-voting rules has become quite a thicket. I won’t go into the gory details (they are making my head hurt!), but here’s the upshot.
A few weeks ago, North Carolina and voting-rights groups reached a legal settlement that had three main components:
- It extended the deadline for absentee ballots to be received in North Carolina from Nov. 6 to Nov. 12.
- It allowed drop boxes to be set up for collecting ballots.
- It made it easier for voters to fix, or “cure,” mistakes on their absentee ballots.
Multiple lawsuits are now waging over the settlement, but the way things currently stand is this: The first two components of the settlement are on hold before the North Carolina Court of Appeals issues a decision on them, hopefully next week. The third part of the settlement still stands, although a judge did clarify that the more generous ballot-curing process did not mean that voters could dodge the requirement that a witness sign their ballot.