Lawsuits, Florence can't stop NC ballots from going out

The New Bern-based firm that prints most of the ballots to be used in North Carolina for the upcoming general election has met a Saturday deadline for absentee ballots despite legal wrangling over what should appear on the ballot and flooding from Hurricane Florence.

Posted 10:58 p.m. Sep 21, 2018 — Updated 10:58 p.m. Sep 21, 2018

Matthew Burns

, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor

RALEIGH, N.C. — The New Bern-based firm that prints most of the ballots to be used in North Carolina for the upcoming general election has met a Saturday deadline for absentee ballots despite legal wrangling over what should appear on the ballot and flooding from Hurricane Florence.

PrintElect has the contract to print ballots for 94 of North Carolina's 100 counties, and President Owen Andrews said ballots were completed this week, despite the hurricane swamping New Bern over the past week. Although several employees had flooded homes, the company's headquarters and main printing plant are on high ground and didn't sustain any damage, he said.

"Our plant was running on Sunday after the storm, and we have been functioning with 90 percent staff since Monday," Andrews said in a statement, adding that some of the ballots were shifted to the company's Raleigh printing plant.

"With nearly 30 years of experience myself in the business of printing ballots, I cannot remember another election cycle where we faced so many different obstacles," he said.

Ballot printing didn't even start until early September because of a series of lawsuits.

Gov. Roy Cooper twice challenged two of six proposed constitutional amendments that will go before voters, calling them vague and misleading. After a panel of judges initially agreed with Cooper, lawmakers changed the wording of the amendments to meet the court's demands.

A candidate for state Supreme Court also challenged a new state law that said he couldn't be listed as a Republican on the ballot, and a judge said lawmakers couldn't change the rules for candidates in the middle of the election.

A federal court also suggested holding a special election for U.S. House seats after ruling that North Carolina's congressional districts were unfairly drawn to favor Republican candidates. But the judges later walked back that idea, saying it would cause too much confusion.

By law, absentee voters must have at least 45 days before an election to receive, complete and submit their mail-in ballots. Saturday marks 45 days before the Nov. 6 election.

"We have never missed the critical absentee ballot deadline, and we worked diligently to make sure we did not miss this deadline," Andrews said.

State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement officials didn't respond to a request for comment on absentee balloting or what is happening with ballots in the six counties PrintElect doesn't serve.

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