North Carolina Elections Board Guts Absentee Ballot Protections in a 7 AM Memo

MAGA Republicans on the North Carolina State Board of Elections just proved they’ll do anything to rig the midterms for Donald Trump. On Friday, the board rammed through new rules for how county officials can toss out absentee ballots in a 3-2 party-line vote, going over the head of the state legislature, the governor, and North Carolina voters. The board dumped the new guidance onto its website at 7:09 that morning, just hours before the vote, on the same day counties started mailing absentee ballots statewide. The memo jumps the gun on stricter ballot rejection standards state law says shouldn’t kick in until 2027, meaning voters could get their ballots tossed for mistakes that wouldn’t have counted against them a week ago. Before the vote, county officials warned that as many as 20% of absentee ballots in any given election arrive with the kinds of technical errors that can now get ballots tossed in November.

“What a load of bullshit. North Carolina election officials saw the legislative review process coming, got scared they might not get their Trumpian-way, and snuck their anti-voting rules through the back door instead. Dumping new absentee ballot guidance online at 7 in the morning and ramming it through hours later, the same day ballots start to go out, is a brazen con job designed to make sure the legislature, the governor, and voters can’t do anything to stop it. County officials can now toss ballots over mistakes voters never even knew were mistakes. And that’s exactly what the people rigging the rulebook on Donald Trump’s behalf behind closed doors had in mind,” said Abhi Rahman, Try And Stop Us Spokesperson.