Wake County Board of Elections officials

Wake County Board of Elections member Angela Hawkins and Board Chairwoman Erica Porter confer. (Photo: Lynn Bonner)

Red and yellow containers sat at the end edge of the Wake County Board of Elections meeting table on Wednesday as members prepared to sift through their contents as part of the painstaking work of reviewing voter information that accompanied absentee ballots.

Thousands of ballots had no problems and were approved in bulk. But some absentee ballots arrived initially without a voter signature. Some were sent without all the witness information included. Some didn’t have the proper notary seals.

Wake County Board of Elections members passed from hand to hand 109 absentee ballots in their envelopes so they could review information voters had sent the county office to correct problems in order for their ballots to count.

One hundred and nine ballots down, nearly 5,000 more to go. And that was just for the Wednesday meeting that ran for more than six hours. On Thursday, the Wake board will consider about 6,000 provisional ballots.

Ninety-nine other counties are having meetings like Wake County’s to decide how many of the last of the absentee and provisional ballots to count on their way to finalizing election totals on Friday. Collectively, they are checking to determine whether votes on those ballots can be added to the totals.

Everyone is interested in accuracy, but the results have personal and professional meaning for candidates who are in close races.

Wake has the most voters, and according to the state Board of Elections, had the most provisional ballots to check. Between absentee ballots and provisional ballots, Wake elections board members settled in for a two-day chore.

Most of the work Wednesday was done in silence, with members occasionally conferring in whispers. The board chatter picked up when members were handed the stacks of absentee ballots that arrived too late to count.

Bins full of absentee ballots await Wake County Board of Elections review. (Photo: Lynn Bonner)

The state legislature ended the three-day grace period for absentee ballots to arrive at board of elections offices. The deadline is now 7:30 pm on Election Day.

Of the 616 late ballots the board denied for lateness, 111 were delivered the day after Election Day, 256 were delivered on Nov. 7, and 146 were delivered on Nov. 8. Those are ballots that likely would have been accepted under the old law.

The stacks of late-arriving ballots included dozens that were sent via FedEx or USPS express delivery but still didn’t make it in time. Several members remarked at the $34 express delivery charge voters paid only to have their ballots arrive too late.

One ballot was sent by express mail on Nov. 4 with a planned Nov. 5 delivery. It didn’t get to the county elections office until Nov. 8.

Voters can go to the North Carolina Board of Elections voter search site to see if their ballots were accepted.

The Wake meeting drew 25 onlookers who settled in for hours of mostly silent viewing. Members of voting rights groups fanned out to county elections meetings across the state this week to watch how boards are approaching their job.

They’ve made a point to try to attend meetings where county board members have been hostile to state instructions for ballot acceptance and locations where the North Carolina Election Integrity Team has been active. The North Carolina Election Integrity Team is connected to Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who in 2020 tried to convince Georgia to find enough votes for President Donald Trump to win the state.

NCEIT has trained volunteers to scour voter rolls and bring challenges against individual voters. At least one person from NCEIT was at the Wake meeting.

Five members of the League of Women Voters and a lawyer with the Southern Coalition of Social Justice watched the Wake board work. Marian Lewin, vice president of the League of Women Voters of North Carolina said that a key observation from watching Wake and keeping tabs on 10 other counties is that absentee voting “is a minefield.”

“There are too many ways it could fail,” she said.

Most of the absentee ballots were checked in batches of hundreds or thousands, but some received individual scrutiny.

The board reviewed 381 ballots that elections staff had opened and resealed because the ballots weren’t in the security envelope. Republicans have a pending lawsuit that challenges counting those ballots. But for now, they can count.

One of those ballots came with an envelope that looked as if it had been chewed by a dog.

“My dog did something like that yesterday,” said board member Greg Flynn.

“Teeth marks and everything,” said Board Chairwoman Erica Porter.

The board counted that ballot.