The following is a list of a North Carolina voter’s legal rights (including those that apply to all U.S. citizens:
- You have the right to cast your vote without having to take or pass any literacy test or meet any property requirements, monetary requirements, or requirements specific to your race, color, or language proficiency including any requirements designed to function as such (N.C. Const. Art. I, § 11, 10, 9; 15th and 24th Amendments to the U.S. Const.; Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965/73)
- You have the right to cast your vote privately and independently (G.S. 163-165.1(e); G.S. 163-273(a); G.S. 163-271; Voting Rights Act of 1965/73)
- You have the right to change or correct your ballot before it is cast* (08 NCAC 10B .0104(b); G.S. 163-166.7)
- You have the right to vote if you are waiting in line at the moment the polls close (G.S. 163-166.01)
- You have the right to vote a provisional ballot (or, situationally, a challenged ballot) if your eligibility to vote is in dispute (08 NCAC 10B .0103; G.S. 163, Art. 8; HAVA, 2002)
- You have the right to request assistance with the voting process from a spouse, child, brother, sister, parent, grandparent, grandchild, mother-in-law, father-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, stepparent or stepchild (G.S. 163-166.8(a)(1))
- You have the right to request (from poll workers) an explanation/demonstration of how to vote using any equipment, prior to voting using said equipment (08 NCAC 04 .0305(c)). Note that this right specifically covers the steps one takes to use the machines as a voter at the polling place, not any other aspect of machine functionality.
- The following conditional rights also apply:
- If you are unable to enter the polling place due to a disability, you may vote curbside from your vehicle (G.S. 163-166.9)
- If you are unable to physically reach a voting booth without assistance or are unable to mark a ballot without assistance due to disability you may request assistance from anyone except for an employer or union representative (G.S. 163-166.8(a)(2))
- Many other general accessibility related rights are applicable but not singularly related to voting (e.g. the right to reasonable wheelchair access to a building, handicapped parking spaces, etc), and are guaranteed by the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act (VAEHA) of 1984, the NVRA and HAVA as well as associated state legislation in N.C.G.S. 168A. See listed laws for details.
Note: To read listed legal references for these rights, consult online government sources for denoted sections of the N.C. Constitution, the U.S. Constitution, Federal Voting Rights/Disability Rights legislation, Chpt. 163 of the N.C. General Statutes, and Section 8 of N.C. Administrative Code.
In instances where a section is not denoted next to referenced law, the listed legal document is included as being core legislation from which other specifically denoted legislation is derived, or the right/rights listed are present in or interpreted from multiple pieces of legislation, where references that do not include specific sections are applicable to the listed right/rights in their entirety or in large enough part to be considered as such.
*The definition of ‘cast’ for a ballot can be found under the question “At what point in the voting process is my ballot considered ‘cast’?”
A ‘sample ballot’ is a document containing all physical elements of a live ballot of a particular style, with a visual disclaimer stating that it is not intended for live voting (N.C.G.S. 163-165.2(b)). Official disclaimers render a ballot unable to be read and clearly state that they are intended for educational purposes; as such, sample ballots are allowed to be copied and distributed (even by third parties) if they were originally from an official source.
Having in one’s possession a document that is, functionally or literally, a live ballot outside of a polling place absent permission for such as part of the fulfillment of a statutory obligation along with the presence of accompanying chain of custody procedures, is a crime (N.C.G.S. 163-273(a)(2); N.C.G.S. 163-275(9) (situationally)).
Sample ballots for each jurisdiction are usually available starting 60-90 days before an election, and are always available by 45 days prior to an election, unless the election in question is a second primary, special election, or municipal election following a primary the month before (in the last case, most of the municipal general ballot will be available prior to a municipal primary, excepting only the contest/contests involved in the primary, as it has not yet been determined who will be listed for those contests).
Regardless of time frame, once the sample ballots have been created and released, those applicable to each respective county will be available in most or all the following places:
- Posted at county Board of Elections offices
- Posted on county Board of Elections websites
- Available on your voter registration record page when you search your first and last name and registration status in the NCSBE’s Voter Search Tool
- Posted at Early Voting sites
- Posted at Election Day precincts
- Posted at other county facilities (varies)
- Present as paper copies provided by third parties (if they have been produced by third parties for voter outreach)
Currently, you can only manually vote straight party in North Carolina by selecting the same party for each contest on the ballot individually. There is no longer any singular option on paper ballots or accessible voting equipment (that prints paper ballots) in North Carolina such that one can vote for all candidates of a single party without voting each contest individually. See N.C.G.S. 163-165.6(f).
‘Assistance’, as the term is used when talking about voting a ballot, describes any action someone may take to help someone vote when present or communicating with a voter voting their ballot, up to and including filling out a ballot for a voter upon request with the voter present and determining the selections.
Note that at a polling place or Early Voting site, a person (other than a poll worker explaining how to vote) maintaining physical presence or being on the phone with a voter at a voting booth constitutes ‘assistance’, regardless of whether or not the person is actually acting to assist a voter, because it cannot be adequately determined that they are not.
Within the context of assisting a disabled voter, the assisting party may not seem to be suggesting any particular choice or seem to be attempting to sway the voter in any way (N.C.G.S. 163-166.8(c)). Behaving in such a manner while assisting a disabled voter opens one up to the potential of accusations of voter intimidation.
Yes, you may leave contests on your ballot blank if you do not wish to vote for any candidate in that contest with no tabulation machine warning messages, though there will be a legally required verification of what you are doing to make sure it wasn’t a mistake when generating a ballot on the ExpressVote (i.e. the machine will require that you confirm you intended to leave a contest blank). This is called an ‘undervote’, and does not render a ballot invalid.
You may also cast a completely blank ballot, but feeding a blank ballot into the DS200 Tabulator will require you to confirm through a subsequent screen that casting a blank ballot is in fact what you intended before the machine will accept it. If a voter chooses to cast a blank ballot, that ballot would simply register internally as having passed through the machine for the purpose of official ballot counts. No votes would be recorded, because there would be no votes on the ballot.
These verification steps are to ensure that little reasonable legal argument can be made that someone misunderstood what they were doing when they cast a blank ballot or (in the case of the ExpressVote) a ballot where some contests were not voted for or less than the number of allowed candidates was voted for, an undervote.
This is important because once a person casts their ballot into the DS200 Tabulator and it successfully passes through the scanner, that is their final vote. That ballot will not be retrieved, by request or otherwise, to be spoiled and that individual will not be permitted to vote another (non-provisional) ballot.
A ballot is considered ‘cast’, after which it cannot be changed and a (non-provisional) replacement ballot cannot be issued:
- On Election Day and at Early Voting (in-person), the moment it successfully passes through the DS200 Scanner and into the bottom compartment
- For Absentee by Mail Ballots, after the ballot has been mailed or physically returned to a county elections office (N.C.G.S 163-233.1).
Note that in any situation outside of the norm, such as if it is claimed that a ballot was cast without a voter’s permission, legal procedure is to have that voter cast a provisional ballot. Such situations are the core purpose of provisional ballots. Once a ballot has been cast in an individual’s name they will not be permitted to cast another non-provisional ballot under any circumstances, and any additional non-provisional ballot cast or attempted to be cast by that individual could be considered fraudulent.
Voting for too many candidates in a contest is called an ‘overvote’. If you accidentally vote for too many candidates in a contest, the DS200 Tabulator will indicate this has occurred when you cast your paper ballot (on the ExpressVote ballot marking device, you will never generate an overvoted ballot because it does not let you select more than the allowed number of candidates).
When the DS200 Tabulator displays the overvoted ballot screen, you should let the Tabulator Assistant (the person watching the machine) know and they will explain your choices to you. You can either cast the ballot, which treats the overvoted contest as blank but counts all correctly voted contests, or you may ask that the ballot be returned. If you ask for the ballot to be returned, it is spoiled (invalidated) and you may vote a new ballot.
Under state law (08 NCAC 10B .0104(B)), a voter may redo their ballot up to three times (for a total of four attempts at voting properly). Regardless of circumstances, a fourth attempt at casting a ballot is a voter’s final attempt at casting a ballot through the DS200 Tabulator. Any subsequent ballot voted after four attempts must be provisional.
Provisional voting results when a voter has shown up to an Early Voting site or an Election Day polling place to vote and for whatever reason their eligibility cannot be verified, they do not have a valid form of photo identification, or in any other circumstance where a voter insists upon voting a ballot but election officials are unable to legally tabulate it immediately.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) made it Federal law that any voter who is determined to be ineligible to vote normally at a polling place for any reason must be provided the opportunity to vote a provisional ballot if one is requested and they attest to their eligibility to vote. The provisional process acts as a safeguard against polling place clerical errors or other erroneous circumstances related to verifying a voter’s eligibility resulting in a voter being disenfranchised by mistake. It also serves as assurance that election officials at each polling place are not deciding who can and cannot vote arbitrarily.
The provisional process, as it is in North Carolina (although procedures are fairly consistent across all states with slightly differing situational use cases and exceptions for states who already had similar processes in place prior to 2002), involves a voter filling out a ballot and answering a precinct judge’s questions to provide information necessary for Board of Elections office staff to research the voter’s eligibility to vote.
Once the process is completed, the judge seals the ballot in an envelope and keeps it in a separate secure container designated as ‘provisional’. Provisional ballots are never tabulated at the time they are filled out, as this would defeat their purpose entirely.
Provisional ballots are returned to each County Board of Elections office on Election Night. Each corresponding voter’s situation is subsequently analyzed over the course of the following week (7 or 10 days) prior to County Canvass Day, the date upon which results are finalized at a county level.
Part of the information required of the voter during the provisional voting process is their contact information. During the provisional research process, a provisional voter may be contacted by the Board of Elections office in order to obtain more information if necessary.
On Canvass Day, research is presented to each respective county’s Board of Elections, identifying whether each ballot is or is not considered by the office staff to be valid with accompanying legal reasoning. After the final determination is made on any ballots for which a determination must be made by the Board, the valid ballots are tabulated using the DS850 Central Count Tabulator and added to final county election totals.
When a voter votes a provisional ballot, they are also given a set of instructions explaining how they may check to see if their ballot was accepted or not after it has been considered on Canvass Day. Elections personnel will not directly contact provisional voters with this information.
The State Board of Elections offers a Voter Search Tool where any voter can be looked up by their birth date, full name, and registration status. This record is populated directly from SEIMS, North Carolina’s statewide voter registration system. After each Election, every voter that voted has their record in SEIMS updated to reflect them having voted. However, if you wish to check this information, wait until County Canvass Day, as the process for entering this information and ensuring its accuracy is time consuming and may not be complete until then.
That information is based on ATV (Authorization to Vote) forms at each precinct, which are a voter’s record of having voted. What a voter voted for is not included in this search, as revealing such is illegal, and is recorded by voting machine separate from the ATV forms.
For information on additional means with which provisional voters can confirm their ballot was counted, see FAQ question “What is provisional voting?”.
Contests’ ordering on a ballot is currently laid out according to legal guidelines contained in N.C.G.S. 163-165.6(b). Candidates within each contest are ordered either strictly alphabetically in the case of municipal elections, or chosen by random drawing at a State level between alphabetically and reverse-alphabetically for each election of other types.
Guidelines for referendum questions are listed in the same section of Chpt. 163 linked above.
The party affiliation of candidates in contests on a ballot is contingent upon whether or not that contest is ‘partisan’. Offices that are considered ‘partisan’ have candidates’ party affiliation listed below their name. Contests that are considered ‘nonpartisan’ do NOT have candidate’s party affiliations listed below their name.
Whether a contest is considered partisan or not varies by associated jurisdiction. Explicit legal verbiage stating such for each individual contest is spread throughout Federal, State, and Local law. The short version is:
- Any contest on a primary ballot will not list any candidates’ party affiliations because the ballots are based on party (i.e. every candidate on a particular ballot is affiliated with the same party)
- Board of Education and Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor contests are nonpartisan throughout North Carolina, including Alamance County
- Municipal contests can be either nonpartisan or partisan in North Carolina based on a municipality’s choice. Alamance County municipal contests are all nonpartisan.
- All other statewide NC contests are partisan
- All Federal contests are partisan
This occurs because of jurisdiction. ‘Jurisdiction’ is the term for a geographic area represented or served by an elected body or official.
For example, the entire state of North Carolina is the jurisdiction of the Governor of North Carolina, so everyone living in North Carolina can vote for Governor of North Carolina, but someone (permanently) living in Austin, Texas cannot send in (and will never be sent purposely to fill out) an Absentee by Mail ballot voting for Governor of North Carolina, because they do not live in North Carolina.
This same concept applies to smaller geographic areas. The most applicable examples in Alamance County are NC House District 63 and NC House District 64. Both of the offices attached to those jurisdictions are offices associated with the state of North Carolina, but neither of those offices represent the entire state of North Carolina, or even the entirety of Alamance County.
The NC House is districted, meaning that each seat is filled by election in a small, non-overlapping geographic slice (district) of North Carolina, and the person elected to each seat is treated as representing* their own particular slice *of North Carolina in voting for statewide legislation.
So, when you go to vote in Alamance County on an even numbered year in a General Election, you will either see NC House District 64 OR NC House District 63, never both, on your ballot. This is because you do not live in the area represented by the seat corresponding to the contest you are not seeing.
Other Alamance County examples are all Municipal examples. For more information visit our website information section on types of Elections.
