As the nation gears up for the upcoming election, North Carolina is set to kick off the mail-in ballot process on Friday, marking the beginning of months of early and mail-in voting across the country. However, a potential delay looms on the horizon due to a challenge from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy’s team will present their case to a Wake County judge on Thursday, arguing that state officials have no valid reason to keep him on the ballot. If the judge rules in Kennedy’s favor, millions of ballots will need to be reprinted to exclude his name, which could cause a delay in the mail-in voting process.
The lawsuit claims that the state officials’ concerns about the cost and time needed to print corrected ballots are a self-inflicted issue. “To the extent their ‘practicality’ test is grounded in the cost and time needed to print correct ballots, this is an issue of Defendants’ own making,” the lawsuit states.
While North Carolina is the first state to start mail-in voting, Pennsylvania will be the first to offer early in-person voting, starting on September 16, just 50 days before election day. Other critical swing states will follow suit, with early in-person voting starting on the following dates:
- Arizona: Wednesday, October 9 – 27 days before election day.
- Georgia: Tuesday, October 15 – 21 days before election day.
- North Carolina: Thursday, October 17 – 19 days before election day
- Nevada: Saturday, October 19 – 17 days before election day
- Wisconsin: Tuesday, October 22 – 14 days before election day
- Michigan: Sunday, October 27 – Nine days before election day
Early and mail-in voting have become increasingly popular, with over 100 million voters casting their ballots before election day in 2020. This trend continued in the 2022 midterms, and is expected to shape the contours of electoral strategy in the upcoming election. Candidates will need to adapt their strategies to account for the extended voting window, surging at key points in the early voting period to maximize their impact.
