Absentee by Mail Voting – Alamance County Board of Elections

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Across the U.S., there are dozens of laws in each state governing the minutiae of requesting, filling out, signing, returning, cancelling, and tabulating an Absentee by Mail ballot. The systems vary widely, from universal mail-in voting where every registered voter is automatically sent a ballot in the mail each Election and only very limited options for voting in person exist at all, to states which still limit all Absentee by Mail voting solely to those with a disability and impose as many restrictions on its use for that purpose as courts will allow under Federal law.

Due to Absentee by Mail voting and its details being a heavily partisan issue, many differences exist aside from those mentioned above, including whether or not a near relative can return a ballot for you, identification/citizenship requirement differences between mail voting and in person voting, the presence or absence of ballot drop boxes, etc.

The bottom line is that Absentee by Mail voting in one State is far from necessarily the same as Absentee by Mail voting in another State. For more on the specifics of our system, explore the rest of the FAQ questions in this section.

The Absentee by Mail voting process in North Carolina involves many steps and requirements, and changes regularly because it is a highly partisan issue. Those looking for detailed instructions should visit the NC State Board of Elections’ instructions for Absentee by Mail voting page, as the instructions there are the most thorough and up to date.

Each Absentee by Mail ballot must be requested separately for each individual Election (N.C.G.S. 163-230.2(a)(7)). The only exceptions to this are:

UOCAVA Military and Overseas ballots, a request for one of which can be denoted as a request for a UOCAVA ballot for every election in a particular calendar year
Someone with a disability who has attested to an illness or disability that will likely prevent them from voting in person for the next calendar year can request to receive an Absentee by Mail ballot for every election in a particular calendar year (N.C.G.S. 163-226 (b))
Someone who has requested an Absentee by Mail ballot for a Primary (of a particular type, if the person in question is registered Unaffiliated) may choose to automatically receive an Absentee by Mail ballot for any associated Second Primary, if such a Primary occurs and they are eligible to vote in it (N.C.G.S. 163-227.1)

For more on UOCAVA ballots, see FAQ question “What is a UOCAVA ballot?”.

Neither requesting nor receiving an Absentee by Mail ballot bar an individual from later changing their mind and choosing to vote in-person at an Early Voting site or on Election Day instead. However, returning an Absentee by Mail ballot does bar an individual from doing so. It is explicitly stated in law that Absentee by Mail ballots, once returned, cannot be cancelled if they are valid (N.C.G.S 163-233.1)

Furthermore, if someone returns an Absentee by Mail ballot then proceeds to vote in person at an Early Voting site or on Election Day as well, they will be risking accusations of double voting. A case can be made that a voter who goes to vote in person after returning an Absentee by Mail ballot would be expecting that both ballots will be counted and as such is attempting to vote multiple times in a single Election.

County Boards of Elections never send out Absentee Ballot Request Forms to voters unless a voter has specifically requested one. If you have received such a form in the mail unsolicited, but do not intend to vote Absentee by Mail, you may ignore it without being penalized in any way. Absentee Ballot Request Forms are, by law (N.C.G.S. 163-230.2), provided for free by the State Board of Elections. As such, third party groups often distribute them through mailings.

If you do wish to vote Absentee by Mail, feel free to request a ballot using the form a third party sent you, as long as it is the correct one, which can be found on the NCSBE’s website.

A mistake on an absentee ballot itself, such as filling out bubbles improperly or voting for too many candidates in a contest will not be detected until the ballot is tabulated, because Absentee by Mail ballot return envelopes remain unopened and sealed until tabulation. Depending on when the ballot is returned and the volume of Absentee by Mail ballots received in a particular election, this can happen in a meeting prior to an election, on Election Day, or after Election Day.

Regardless of when the ballot is run, the voter corresponding to that ballot will be unlikely to be present. Rather than individually contacting each voter to redo their ballot (which is not permitted for mistakes on a ballot itself), what happens in this case is the following:

The DS850 Central Count Tabulator cannot read a ballot.
If it is determined there is a deficiency with the ballot or it will not read after multiple attempts, it is brought to the Board of Elections for analysis.
Whatever deficiency is determined to have caused the ballot to be unable to be run is determined, and the voter’s votes are recorded on a new, undamaged ballot (duplicated).
The duplicated ballot is cast as their ballot, with the original retained for records.

Ballot duplication is the structured process of officially recreating the ballot of a voter who is not present during ballot tabulation.

Ballot duplication is only performed by a bipartisan team (one Democrat and one Republican) during an open Board of Elections Absentee meeting. Ballot duplication is never performed at polling places, Early Voting sites, or anywhere else absent a quorum of actual appointed Board of Elections members. Ballot duplication occurs according to the following procedure:

One of the two individuals involved takes the original ballot stamped ‘Original’, the other takes a blank ballot stamped ‘Duplicate Ballot’
The individual with the original ballot reads the voter’s selections from that ballot out loud, contest by contest
The individual with the blank ballot records what the other individual reads aloud, contest by contest
When the duplicate ballot is complete, the individuals swap ballots and ensure that the correct votes were read or recorded, respectively, by the other.
If this process is done by a bipartisan team that does not consist of two Board of Elections members, two Board of Elections members of opposite parties also verify that the correct selections were made.

The above processes apply specifically to Alamance County, but can be generalized to any other county depending on type of central count tabulator is used and the sheer volume of ballots.

An individual can request an Absentee by Mail ballot for someone else only under the following circumstances:

The requesting individual is a near relative (spouse, brother, sister, parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, mother-in-law, father-in-law, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, stepparent or stepchild; (see N.C.G.S 163-226(f)) or legal guardian of the person for whom the ballot is intended
The individual requesting the ballot is doing so for someone with a disability, is not the disabled individual’s employer or union representative, and fills out requisite sections of the request form related to assisting a disabled voter (see Numbered Memo 2022-11).

A UOCAVA ballot is also sometimes called a Military and Overseas ballot. ‘UOCAVA’ stands for the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. This act, originally passed at a Federal level in 1986 and modified in 2010, lays out methods by which United States military personnel on active duty and private citizens overseas for an extended period of time can vote in Federal contests.

Much like other major Federal voting legislation, it soon became applicable through individual state laws to state and local contests as well.

The specifics of this act are numerous, but some notable examples of what it allows for military and overseas voters are:

Transmission of ballots by email or fax
Acceptance of ballots received after Election Day but before Canvass Day with no requirement for attestation to or proof of the presence of extenuating circumstances
Early mailing of ballots, when requested and available
Requesting of ballots for all elections in the current year with a single request, sent separately and when available
Waiving of any requirement to reject ballots due to any circumstance outside of essential missing information required to identify where the ballot came from and a Photo ID for non-federal contests.
The ability to vote a ballot containing only Federal contests, issued by the Federal Government and returned to the county Board of Elections corresponding to the individual’s last lived at domestic address

More state specifics for these ballots may be read in Article 21A of N.C.G.S Chapter 163.

The NC State Board of Elections maintains a statewide Absentee by Mail ballot portal which streamlines certain aspects of the Absentee by Mail voting process. The portal allows for the following:

Initiating a normal domestic Absentee by Mail voting process by submitting a request for an Absentee by Mail ballot. This is an alternative to the traditional paper request form that can be used from any county in NC. Requests initiated from this portal are routed to the appropriate county based on voter information and the process continues with the county office from there.
Initiating a UOCAVA voting process by submitting a request for a UOCAVA ballot. This process can have many branches depending on voter preferences and specific situations; for more information visit the NC State Board of Elections’ informational page on UOCAVA voting.
Initiating an online voting process for visually impaired voters. This process is only available for voters who attest to a visual impairment with which they would otherwise find it difficult to fill out a ballot without assistance. Visually impaired voters can also practice this process with a demonstration available through the portal without having to commit to voting with this method. For more information visit the NC State Board of Elections’ informational page on Accessible Absentee Voting.
Engaging with an applicable Sample Ballot for an upcoming Election. Voters may view, download, and practice filling out a Sample Ballot applicable to their jurisdiction. This process is only available for registered voters.

BallotTrax allows North Carolina voters to track where their Absentee by Mail ballot stands in the overall Absentee by Mail voting process. This is a useful tool, as the Absentee by Mail voting process has multiple steps and requirements, and can be complicated.

BallotTrax is a service separate from the Absentee by Mail Ballot Portal, offered by a third party on behalf of the NC State Board of Elections. It is not an online voting platform, so Absentee by Mail voters’ votes are never exposed to the service as no actual ballots ever pass through it.

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1128 S Main St.
Graham, NC 27253

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Email: Alamance.BOElections@alamancecountync.gov
Phone: 336-570-6755

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