Activist groups working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm are seeking an injunction to block new state guidance for North Carolina election officials handling mail-in ballots.
The North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, Down Home North Carolina, and individual voters Vaeme Afokpa and Raquel Nelson filed a motion Monday for a preliminary injunction. The same plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the state elections board and Durham and Guilford County boards on Sept. 22. They are working with the Elias Law Group.
“On September 4, 2026, the same day North Carolina began mailing absentee ballots to voters, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (‘the Board’) changed the rules governing how those ballots would be counted,” according to a memorandum filed along with the motion. “After a failed attempt at notice-and-comment rulemaking, the Board rushed new policies into place by a party-line vote after only 30 minutes of discussion and no public input.”
“Two of these new policies violate the U.S. Constitution and federal law: the Sealing Requirement and Signature Verification Requirement,” the memo added. “Together, they will invalidate thousands of qualified voters’ ballots in the November election unless enjoined.”
“Plaintiffs seek to preliminarily enjoin the Sealing Requirement under the Civil Rights Act’s Materiality Provision, and both Challenged Provisions for violating the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection, to vote, and to due process,” the memo explained. “Relief is necessary to ensure Plaintiffs, their members and constituents, and other eligible North Carolinians have their votes counted. The balance of equities favors ‘preserving the status quo’ that governed absentee ballots before the Board’s eleventh-hour actions.”
“In this very moment, thousands of North Carolinians are preparing to cast their votes in the 2026 general election,” the original complaint explained. “More than 81,000 voters have already submitted requests for absentee ballots — a secure and reliable method to vote that North Carolina has offered its citizens for decades.”
“When a North Carolinian casts an absentee ballot, they rely on their county board of elections, and ultimately the North Carolina State Board of Elections (‘State Board’), to ensure their ballot is counted and their voice heard,” the lawsuit continued. “The North Carolina General Assembly has delegated substantial authority to the State Board to implement the election code with procedures that safeguard both North Carolinians’ constitutional right to vote and election security. In recent elections, the State Board has used its authority to ensure the right to vote, including by absentee ballot.”
“But on September 4, 2026 — amidst a national assault on mail voting, and on the same day that North Carolina began issuing absentee ballots to voters — the State Board dramatically upended the status quo,” the complaint argued. “The Board’s new Republican majority rushed to implement eleventh-hour absentee ballot restrictions that will inevitably disenfranchise scores of North Carolina voters. They did so without meaningful public notice and over the fierce objections of dissenting members.”
“The State Board’s new policies will require counties to invalidate absentee ballots for innocuous, technical errors unrelated to individuals’ eligibility to vote,” according to the lawsuit.
The suit criticizes a provision to disqualify ballots if a voter submits a ballot pacakge with an “unsealed inner envelope” or with the ballot outside that inner envelope. “The voter has no opportunity to cure the ballot to save it from rejection, even though the State Board’s policies allow voters to cure other materially indistinguishable issues,” according to the complaint. “The State Board offered no sufficient explanation or justification for this unprecedented policy.”
The suit also objects to a signature-verification requirement “that was previously prohibited.” The state elections board “defined neither clear standards nor any instructions to guide county boards’ discretion in how to verify signatures.”
“This state-sanctioned free-for-all will inevitably subject ballots to varying scrutiny between and within counties — resulting in unequal treatment of voters and arbitrary disenfranchisement,” the Elias clients argued.
“Worse, the State Board’s new policies also eliminate its prior ban on signature matching — that is, the process of confirming a voter’s identity by comparing the signature on their inner application envelope with other signatures available from the same voter,” according to the complaint. “Signature matching is notoriously fraught with error, even when there are articulable standards governing the process — which are entirely absent here.”
“The State Board’s late-breaking policies threaten to disenfranchise North Carolinians for immaterial mistakes with envelope sealing and based on the arbitrary decisions of untrained election officials reviewing their signatures,” the lawsuit argued.
The new policies “deny North Carolina’s absentee voters constitutional due process by invaliding their ballots without a meaningful opportunity to cure purported deficiencies,” the complaint added. “They deny voters equal protection of the laws by allowing local election officials to exercise arbitrary, standardless discretion to invalidate lawfully cast ballots. And they unconstitutionally burden North Carolinians’ right to vote through disparate treatment of similarly situated voters.”
Elias’ clients are asking a judge to “enjoin the State Board’s policies in the upcoming election and all future elections.”