North Carolina has already held a primary election this spring on March 15, but recently re-drawn U.S. Congressional districts in our state mean we have another chance to vote on June 7! This primary falls during summer break for many college students, who may be traveling, living, or studying some place other than their campus community. Students who are registered to vote in their campus community can still take part in the June primary by voting an absentee ballot.
Important to note: students do not need ID to vote absentee!
Here’s the absentee voting process:
- Voter must complete absentee ballot request form. On the request form, the voter must provide NC ID# OR last 4 digits of SS#. Voter must sign form. For schools using TurboVote: students can also request an absentee ballot using TurboVote!
- The request form has a place to put the address where ballot should be mailed. This could be the student’s current address on campus, a summertime address, OR — if your school is coordinating a non-partisan voter engagement initiative– a common campus address where all the ballots would be mailed to a single campus office.
- DO NOT WAIT to send in the ballot request! Ballots should be ready 60 days before election day (now!) and will be mailed to specified address as soon as the request form is received.
- The ballot request form must be received by county Board of Elections by 5 pm on May 31 (the last Tuesday before election day). You can send in request form by mail, email, fax or hand-deliver.
- Once the absentee ballot request form is received by the BOE, the BOE will send you your ballot. Each voter will receive:
- Ballot
- Instructions
- Absentee Application and Certificate found on the back of the return ballot-container envelope
- The voter must mark the ballot in presence of 2 witnesses. Again, if your school has a voter engagement initiative, you could host an absentee ballot “signing party” where students serve as each other’s witnesses. The ballot should be put in return envelope & witnesses sign.
- The completed ballot must be returned to the county board of elections by 5 pm on June 7 (election day). The ballot can be returned by mail OR by hand.
- If returning by mail, best advice is to take the ballot envelope inside the post office and get the stamps hand canceled with a postmark; a great deal of mail dropped into a blue box does not get a postmark.
- If returning by hand, ballot must be delivered by voter herself (or a near-relative). Voter can also hand deliver absentee ballot to an early voting site.
- Congratulations! You exercised your right to vote!
Some final advice: Absentee voting by mail as a campus-wide strategy works best as an organized effort with monitoring and assistance to students. A significant number of mail-in absentee ballots are rejected because of lack of witness addresses or signatures or failure to have them postmarked on time. As an organizer, you can distribute applications for mail-in ballots, collect and send/deliver the completed applications to the county board of elections, have the students’ ballots sent to a central address, and organize time(s) for students to come together, receive their ballots and help each other fill in the witness information – you can do all that as a third-party, in an organized fashion. You can even provide the 98 cents needed on the oversized envelope with the completed ballot. But only the voter or voter’s near relative can put the envelope into the mail or deliver it to a polling place/elections office.
Get more info on absentee voting in NC:
SNC State Board of Elections Absentee Voting Page:
Democracy NC has a good summary of absentee ballot process.
June 7 Election Calendar (thanks to Common Cause NC Voter Guide):
May 13 – Voter registration deadline (NOTE: If you missed this deadline, you can STILL register and vote during the early voting period. Learn more.)
May 26 – Early voting & same-day registration begins
May 31 – Deadline to request an absentee ballot
June 4 – Early voting & same-day registration ends
JUNE 7 – PRIMARY ELECTION DAY (Polls open 6:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m. Find your polling place.)