Voter ID law leads to frustration and confusion for Mecklenburg election board
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — The Nov. 7 elections were officially approved and certified for races across North Carolina Friday afternoon, which included multiple close races in the Mecklenburg County area.
The mayoral race in Monroe ended in a coin-flip decision, along with the Ranlo commissioners’ race in Gaston County.
The focus for the Mecklenburg County Election Board will now turn to the 2024 elections, which will include the gubernatorial and presidential elections.
As part of the preparation will be clarification of how to approach provisional ballots associated with the state’s new voter ID law.
During a Thursday night session, election board members went through hundreds of provisional and absentee ballots
As traditionally done, some were approved per their accordance with the law, while others were thrown out due to a number of reasons.
There were 99 provisional ballots reviewed because the voter did not have an ID on them.
Per state law, they filled out an exception form, and labeled why they did not have an ID.
“The form is not just a check box,” Kristin Mavromatis with the election office explained. “They are going to look at your reason, and you are signing an affidavit that you are being truthful. If you look at some of them, it was not necessarily that they weren’t truthful, it was that they were not valid reasons.”
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Where confusion and frustration grew within the board Thursday was the interpretation of the law, and how it applied to reasons some people wrote down for not having an ID.
Out of the 99 ballots considered reasonable impediment provision, 29 were not approved to be cast due to a variety of reasons. Board members said the law was unclear to determine if a reason is good enough for approval.
Frustration also mounted when board members had to decide why an exception form might have been filled out wrong, or incompletely.
“One frustration you saw with our board was that you now have to sign twice – which – that’s a frustration,” Mavromatis said. “So hopefully the state will streamline that as well.”
Mecklenburg County BOE Director Michael Dickerson said this issue to be expected.
“This got a lot of things out that we needed to start talking about,” he explained. “It shows that it’s got them thinking about the process. So we can come back and in the next few months be able to make recommendations to make it bigger and better.”
To find out if your provisional ballot was denied and why, voters are asked to contact the toll-free numbers given when they voted, or email or call the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections.
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