‘Hardest thing I’ve done’: North Carolina elections director blocked her deceased mom’s ballot
The integrity of the 2020 election became especially personal for Brunswick County Elections Director Sara Knotts on Friday when she had to ask her elections board to reject her mother’s ballot.
Knotts felt obligated to do this because her mother had submitted an absentee ballot in September, then died on Oct. 11, several weeks before Election Day on Nov. 3.
North Carolina election law requires voters to be alive on Election Day. That includes voters who cast their ballots early by mail-in absentee ballot or via in-person early voting.
The Brunswick County Board of Elections voted unanimously to remove the absentee ballot of 62-year-old Anne Ashcraft of Winnabow because she was deceased as of Nov. 3 and therefore not qualified to participate in the election..
“Hardest thing I’ve done as an elections administrator: present a challenge against the absentee ballot cast by my mom,” Knotts tweeted Friday afternoon.
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Ashcraft died of a brain cancer called glioblastoma, Knotts said. That is the same cancer that killed Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Beau Biden, son of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden.
“Honestly, when she was voting her ballot, she was under hospice care. So I knew that she may not be alive on Election Day,” Knotts said Monday.
She added that she briefly considered encouraging her mom not to vote – “just for, to not to have the red tape” – but Knotts knew that voting was important to Ashcraft.
Hardest thing I've done as an elections administrator: present a challenge against the absentee ballot cast by my mom. In NC, the qualifications to vote are judged on election day. She passed away from glioblastoma after submitting her ballot but before Nov 3. #electionintegrity
— Sara Knotts (@SaraKnotts1) November 13, 2020
“So I just kept my mouth shut,” Knotts said, and never told her mother about the election law that could get her ballot removed.
“But I knew after she submitted it that if she passed away, I was going to challenge it,” Knotts said. “Just because I know how contentious this election was, and how much the talk in the media was about how you can’t trust the election process. I think just to maintain the integrity, I knew I was going to have to remove it if she passed away before Election Day.”
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Board takes case
Ashcraft’s ballot was accepted on Sept. 29, 12 days before she died.
When the Brunswick County Board of Elections took up Ashcraft’s ballot on Friday, Knotts stepped aside and had another elections staff person present the case.
Board members on Friday praised Knotts for her honesty just before they took the vote.
“For the folks in the audience, and perhaps for the press: You might not have had recognized the name of Sara Anne Ashcraft. It’s Sara’s mother. And Sara actually brought this challenge,” said Board Member Randy Pelton. “And I think that speaks volumes to her integrity and the integrity of the elections staff here in Brunswick County. Thank you very much for your burden, Sara.”
Chairman Boyd Williamson said he was proud to be associated with Knotts and the staff.
The comments cheered Knotts, she said, after seeing so many people bad-mouth elections workers and the process.
“It’s hurtful when members of the public try to undermine what we do by saying things they don’t fully understand,” Knotts said.
She said she was determined to avoid providing any ammunition to the critics who allege dead people are voting.
“I was like: I am not going to let my mom’s voting become something that people use to say that my office is not – you know – fully transparent, and that we allow things like that to happen. I just couldn’t do it," Knotts said.
Nine other Brunswick County ballots were challenged and rejected on Friday.
Knotts said some people had voted twice. A couple may have been confused on whether their absentee ballots had been counted, she said, and another appears to have dementia.
A voter missed a residency deadline to qualify to vote in this election, Knotts said, and some voted while on parole for felony convictions. State law says felons can't vote until their punishment, including probation or parole, is complete. But a judge recently ruled that some felons in North Carolina – though not all – are allowed to vote while on probation or parole.
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Change the law?
The question has come up before on whether North Carolina should count the ballots of people who die before Election Day after they lawfully cast their ballots in early voting or via absentee ballot.
In 2014, election officials in Forsyth County had to reject the absentee ballot of Everette Harris – father of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Harris – because Everette Harris had died after submitting his ballot, WRAL reported.
After the May primary, then-North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, against whom Mark Harris had run in the May primary, tried to pass a law to ensure that such ballots would be counted. Tillis (who now is in the U.S. Senate and won reelection on Nov. 3) called his proposal the “Absentee Ballot/Everette Harris Act.”
The bill passed the state House 115-0 and was sent to the state Senate, where it was buried in a committee without ever getting a hearing.
Senior North Carolina reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@gannett.com and 910-261-4710.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: North Carolina elections director blocked her dead mother's vote
