North Carolina mail ballot rejection rates keep rising

Mail ballots in North Carolina continue to be rejected at a significantly higher rate than in 2022, after the GOP imposed last-minute restrictions on mail voting, according to the latest data.

Of all mail ballots received so far, 3.2% have been rejected, according to new data compiled by Common Cause North Carolina and shared with Democracy Docket Wednesday afternoon. In 2022, North Carolina’s rejection rate was 2.2%, state figures show, and the nationwide rate was 1.5%, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Common Cause North Carolina and other advocacy groups used ordinary voters and attorneys to gather data from 27 counties, which showed a total of 628 spoiled ballots so far, out of 15,035 total ballots cast. The state has 100 counties, but data is not available for all of them yet.

If the 3.2% rejection rate holds statewide, a total of around 4,000 mail ballots, almost all likely from eligible voters, would be projected to be discarded in the state’s election.

That could have a major impact.

“It doesn’t take a big spoilage rate in order to impact not only a local election or a legislative election, but a statewide race in North Carolina,” Common Cause North Carolina State Director Sailor Jones told Democracy Docket. “In a state where a statewide race like state Supreme Court can be determined by a few hundreds of votes.”

Ballot rejections for a myriad of reasons are routine, like when a signature is illegible or a married couple puts both their ballots in the same envelope. But there is strong evidence that the new GOP restrictions are driving the higher rate. 

Wake and Guilford counties have each said 2.5% of mail ballots have been rejected solely because voters violated one of the new GOP-backed rules by failing to properly seal the inner envelope of their ballot, Democracy Docket reported Tuesday.

Voters can track the status of their ballots and take steps to cure spoiled ballots using the state’s BallotTrax portal. But as the election approaches, there is less and less time for counties to notify voters to do so, a concern noted by voting rights advocates closely monitoring the rejection rates.

Some of the state’s largest counties are seeing the trend take hold. Rejection rates for various weekly counts have reached 6-8% in Forsyth, Mecklenburg and Durham counties. All those counties are Democratic strongholds.

In Guilford County, there’s been a steady rate of around 2.5% in ballot rejections. But when the board met on Tuesday for its weekly count, the rate jumped to nearly 6%, according to Carolyn Bunker, a Democratic election board member, who provided numbers to Democracy Docket.

Bunker said the board rejected 41 of 694 ballots received, with 13 of those ballots rejected because of issues with envelope sealing. The board member said she was frustrated that the state waited to consider the rules until the day ballots were sent out, circumventing typical legislative review needed when a rule faces significant opposition — as the envelope sealing rule did.

“We should have been talking about unsealed envelopes last summer,” Bunker said, calling the vote “a deliberate manipulation of the time that laws are being passed and instituted.”