Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s fight to withdraw his name from the ballot in 2024 exposed the need to reform North Carolina’s candidate withdrawal and absentee ballot deadline laws. Two years later, they still need reform.
North Carolina starts voting long before any other state
Under North Carolina law, county boards of elections must start sending out absentee ballots 60 days before election day. That legal requirement is earlier than in every other state except Delaware (which is also 60 days).
However, Delaware’s primary is not until September 15, so only North Carolina will send general election ballots out on September 4, 60 days before election day. As seen in the chart below from the Center for Election Innovation and Research, that is well before any other state. The next-earliest state, Wisconsin, does not begin mailing absentee ballots until September 17, 47 days before the election.
Federal law requires states to mail ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before election day.
Candidate withdrawal attempt results in a lawsuit
In 2024, the State Board of Elections rejected Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s attempt to withdraw his name from the ballot. His party successfully sued the board to get his name off the ballot:
The lawsuit quickly worked its way through the court system, with the SBE winning in a lower court decision and We the People winning on appeal. That set up a date with the North Carolina Supreme Court.
The state’s high court also decided quickly, declaring in a 4–3 decision on September 9 that the SBE had to remove Kennedy from the ballot. Writing for the majority, Justice Trey Allen noted that SBE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell failed to follow up with the Kennedy campaign after their August 23 notice and instead told county boards to “continue the ballot preparation process.” The court noted several other points in the process where Bell could have paused ballot printing yet failed to do so.
Thus, as Allen noted in the court’s order, “To a large extent, any harm suffered by defendants in light of the Court of Appeals’ order is of their own making.”
The court then got to the heart of the matter, declaring that the time, effort, and expense of printing new ballots “is a price the North Carolina Constitution expects us to incur to protect voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience and have that vote count.”
As a result, county boards had to incur the time and expense (about $1 million) of reprinting all their ballots.
While there was a legal question about the withdrawal process for presidential candidates, state law clearly states that all other candidates may withdraw “prior to the first day on which military and overseas absentee ballots are transmitted to voters under Article 21A of this Chapter.” Again, county boards start transmitting ballots 60 days before election day. Had Rep. Chuck Edwards decided to wait until the House vote to censure him this week to withdraw his candidacy, all the counties in the 11th District would have had to print new ballots again.
North Carolina should reform candidate withdrawal and mail ballot deadlines
North Carolina’s candidate withdrawal deadline is not too late; its mail ballot start date is too early.
As the Edwards case demonstrates, there is value in allowing candidates to withdraw their names and be replaced as late as possible, so voters receive accurate information about active candidates without unduly burdening election officials. The General Assembly can accomplish that by instituting two reforms:
- Change the deadline for candidate withdrawal to 60 days (from the current 61 days) and formally apply that rule to presidential candidates.
- Change the deadline to start mailing absentee ballots to 46 days (from the current 60 days).
(I had proposed a seven-day period between candidate withdrawal and ballot mailing in 2024, but have since heard from election offices that a gap of at least 11 days would be more practical.)
Those reforms would preserve the state’s reasonable candidate withdrawal deadline, while still giving North Carolina one of the earliest absentee ballot start dates in the country. It would also remove the specter of counties having to spend their limited election budgets on reprinting ballots due to candidate withdrawals.
They are reasonable and overdue reforms.
