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North Carolina elections board voted along party lines to make it easier to throw out mail-in ballots

The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines on July 20, 2026, to adopt a rule expanding the ability of county election officials to discard mail-in absentee ballots with procedural irregularities, such as an improperly sealed envelope or use of the wrong type of envelope. The rule requires county staff to contact voters but allows ballots to be discarded without appropriate response. The change, which must still be approved by the state's Rules Review Commission, is the board's second partisan voter-suppression rule in four days; on July 16, the board lowered the threshold for rejecting provisional ballots over photo ID.

Jurisdiction
North Carolina
Location
Raleigh, North Carolina

Abuses documented

Actors

The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines on July 20, 2026, to adopt a rule making it easier for county election officials to discard mail-in absentee ballots. Under the measure, county elections board staff may take action to disqualify ballots with "irregularities" — examples cited include a ballot not properly sealed or sent in the wrong type of envelope. Staff are required to contact voters whose ballots have irregularities, but if the voter does not take appropriate corrective action the ballot may be thrown out.

Republican board members said the change would enhance election security and was permissible under existing state law. Democratic board member Siobhan Millen said the rule was "confusing" and risked discarding "perfectly sound ballots due to over-fussiness." Republican board member Angela Hawkins responded that the rule was not "fussy" or "hard" and said voters confused by the container return envelope could contact their local elections board for clarification, adding that the state legislature could change the rule if it chose to.

The rule is subject to approval by the North Carolina Rules Review Commission, which is made up of Republican appointees, before it takes effect. The July 20 vote is a second consecutive partisan action by the board targeting ballot validity; four days earlier, on July 16, 2026, the board voted 3-2 along party lines to lower the threshold for rejecting provisional ballots cast by voters who lack a photo ID, making it possible for a simple majority of a county board to discard such ballots rather than requiring the unanimity previously required.

Why we recorded this

The integrity of mail-in balloting depends on ballots being rejected only under narrow, consistently and transparently applied rules. The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted along party lines to adopt a rule allowing county election officials to discard mail-in ballots with "irregularities" — such as an improperly sealed envelope or the wrong envelope type — without the unanimous agreement that previously acted as a check on partisan rejection. Expanding administrative discretion to discard valid ballots on procedural grounds, by a partisan board majority, raises the risk that legitimate votes are thrown out without cross-partisan agreement.

Sources

  1. NC elections board vote makes it easier to throw out mail-in ballots — NC Newsline primary accessed July 22, 2026

See also