North Carolina counts ballots from overseas voters, which could impact close races, up to nine days after Election Day, with no effective way to contest them.
These voters, protected under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), include tens of thousands of individuals, not just military and diplomatic personnel. Some of these voters have never lived in the United States and may not plan to, yet in North Carolina, they are still eligible to vote in local races, where margins are often tighter than in federal elections.
“The public does not have any method of knowing who those people are and to challenge any of those ballots,” Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team (NCEIT), told The Federalist. “The only ones who know that are the insiders at the state board of elections.”
The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), led by Democrats, oversees voting in the state but has provided limited clarity on who qualifies to vote from overseas. While the state generally shares extensive voter information, such as daily absentee ballot request counts during elections, it has not disclosed how many requests come from overseas, making it difficult for candidates, election integrity advocates, and North Carolinians to gauge the impact of these voters on election outcomes.
According to an NCSBE email, 33,827 UOCAVA ballots were cast in 2020, with 15,116 from military voters and 18,711 from other overseas voters—a group increasingly leaning Democratic. This year, as of Tuesday, 31,292 UOCAVA votes have been cast, including 9,959 military and 21,333 other overseas voters.
Earlier this year, NCSBE’s public information director Patrick Gannon shared some UOCAVA data with The Federalist, but he has since declined further inquiries on the topic.
Though the split between military and overseas voters has shifted, overseas ballots will continue to be accepted through Thursday night, just before the state’s official canvass and certification. Thousands more overseas ballots are expected by then, potentially affecting close races like the state Supreme Court race, where the Republican challenger currently leads the Democratic incumbent by a small margin.
Election integrity advocates have voiced concerns to The Federalist about the potential influence of late UOCAVA votes on close races, as these ballots are largely anonymous to the public and, as previously reported by The Federalist, are exempt from North Carolina’s voter ID requirements and may be submitted through less secure methods like email and fax.
“They’ve got a built-in bank of ballots they can dump in anytime they want to after they know the results, to customize the turnout,” Jay DeLancy, executive director of the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina, said.
Seeking clarity on who these voters are, Republican state Rep. George Cleveland’s office contacted the NCSBE, as shown in emails reviewed by The Federalist.
Paul Cox, the NCSBE’s general counsel, replied that federal law prohibits the board from disclosing this information.
There is a legal complication, which is that federal law does not permit a state to reveal the identity of a military or overseas citizen voter who has requested a ballot in a pending election. See 52 USC 20302(e)(6)(B); 52 USC 20302(f)(3)(B). (This federal prohibition actually predates our state law provision that was passed a few years ago to prevent the identity of a civilian absentee ballot requester from being disclosed until Election Day or when their ballot is accepted.) Therefore, we have to determine whether there is a way to fashion a query that would not reveal such information. That would result, of course, in a more limited data set than what is requested, due to the limitations in the law. We are considering how to provide what we legally can provide, though.
However, Womack notes that information on the identities of UOCAVA voters has been accessible in previous elections.
“It’s got some serious implications because no one in the state has any visibility, other than the state board of elections, over who the authorized UOCAVA voters are,” he said. “So we wouldn’t know if they come in or if they were even internally manipulated, and they’re hiding behind some some obscure federal statute they claim denies us the ability to know who the military voters are. And they’ve never hidden that before. Ever.”
Beyond concerns about transparency, the inability to identify overseas voters prevents North Carolinians from using the legally established process to challenge ballots they believe are illegitimate or fraudulent, as a voter’s identity is required to initiate a challenge.
Once these ballots are included in the official canvass on Friday, they can no longer be contested and will count toward the final results in all elections.
Additionally, Republicans recently lost their state House supermajority, eliminating their veto-proof barrier against the incoming Democratic governor, Josh Stein. Womack notes that his organization, which has previously challenged votes, had planned to push for UOCAVA reforms in the next North Carolina legislative session. However, the loss of the veto-proof majority could hinder these election integrity efforts.
