It’s time for a fact-check of North Carolina politics. This week we’re looking at a claim by Governor Josh Stein about mail-in ballots. Stein wrote on social media last week “The State Board of Elections’ last-minute changes to voting by mail are leading to thousands more absentee ballots being rejected this election —at a rejection rate twice as high as in 2022.” For more, Paul Specht of WRAL joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry.
Marshall Terry: Let’s start with the “last-minute changes” Stein mentions. What is he referring to there?
Paul Specht: He's referring to new rules for the mailing of absentee ballots. In September, the Republican-controlled state board of elections put new rules in place that basically said you've got to follow all these instructions to a T. In previous years, there was some flexibility with whether or not some of the ballots would be counted if they had a technical mistake, like if somebody didn't seal their envelope with the ballot inside. But they are now enforcing that much more strictly.
Terry: Now let's get granular. Can you make a distinction between the overall number of mail-in ballots being rejected and the rate of rejection?
Specht: We took a snapshot on the day of Governor Josh Stein's tweet – that was October 20th – and judged everything by what was available that day. We should point out that at the time Stein tweeted, there was no public state data on the number of ballots that had been rejected or even the rate. He was going by an article put out by Democracy Docket. That's a website created by Marc Elias. He’s been a longtime attorney for Democratic candidates. We reached out to the state, and the day after Stein's tweet, they told us that 1,349 mail-in ballots had been rejected. Now that's lower from 1,829 in 2022. You might say, wait a minute, that's a drop, right? Well, no, not necessarily, because fewer people are voting by mail this year than voted by mail in 2022. There are a lot of reasons for that. In recent years, President Donald Trump has discouraged people from voting by mail, but also back in 2022 more people voted by mail because they were still concerned about the COVID-19 virus.
Terry: Well, was Stein right when he said the rejection rate is twice as high as in 2022?
Specht: He was right that it's up, but not that it had doubled. Even though fewer raw ballots are being rejected, the rate was higher on Oct. 21. At least according to state officials. They said that the rate of rejection by Oct. 20 was 3.1%. And at the same time, in 2022, the rate was about 2.6%. So it had gone up a half a percentage point.
Terry: So Stein was getting this twice as high figure from Democracy Docket. Where did they get it from?
Specht: They were relying on data collected by Common Cause North Carolina and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. They had analyzed data from 27 of North Carolina's 100 counties. Now Democracy Docket initially reported that North Carolina's rejection rate this year was double the rate the state saw. At some point, they updated that story to say that it was double the rate the entire nation saw in 2022. Now I have to say here, I've reached out to both groups and I'm not sure where the problem lies.
I'm not sure if Common Cause and Southern Coalition for Social Justice data was inaccurate or if Democracy Docket interpreted it incorrectly. Either way, the first publication of Democracy Docket reported that North Carolina's rejection rate as of Oct. 20 was double the rate in 2022 by the same date, and that's not true.
Terry: So how did you rate this claim from Gov. Josh Stein?
Specht: We rated this mostly false. Here’s why: think of it like a three-strike system, OK? He said in North Carolina, thousands more absentee ballots are being rejected this election at a rejection rate twice as high as 2022. All right, so let's go through this. Were thousands more being rejected in terms of raw numbers? No, the number was down. Was the rejection rate twice as high as it was in 2022? As of Oct. 20, no. But was it up? Yes. So one out of three there. He went on in his social media post to make a point: make sure you follow these instructions very closely. This rate fluctuates as the early voting period goes on until we get to Election Day. It can change because they receive more and more ballots every day, and the state has said they expect the number to be higher. The final rate of rejection in 2022, it was 2.2%. State officials say they do expect that to be higher this year. Now, will it be twice as much? That remains to be seen.
These fact checks are a collaboration between PolitiFact and WRAL.
