Kennedy kerfuffle makes mess of first mail voting in U.S. election

This was supposed to be the week the first ballots were cast in a swing state in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with the start of voting by mail.

That's now been plunged into disarray.

The cause is a feud involving Robert Kennedy Jr. The setting? North Carolina, where a court battle stalled plans to start mailing ballots to three million residents by the legal deadline last Friday.

The state's conservative-majority Supreme Court has sided with the third-party candidate, who now backs Donald Trump and wanted his name removed from ballots in specific swing states.

The court ruled Monday that millions of ballots carrying Kennedy's name must indeed be reprinted, blaming state election officials for not acting sooner to heed his wishes.  

It's an inauspicious start to the voting season and reminiscent of the myriad court battles that marked the chaotic pandemic-era election four years ago.

All of this is unfolding in a state that's become a potentially game-changing electoral battleground. Polls show a statistical tie between Trump and Kamala Harris, with two new surveys this week even showing her three points ahead.

"It just drives me nuts when there's so many of us who readily work our asses off to get ready for, and then implement, an election — Republicans and Democrats alike," said Democratic volunteer Robert Kline, a semi-retired doctor speaking Monday between phone-banking and door-knocking shifts in Asheville, N.C.

"Then, to have this kind of partisan nonsense inserted, it's just heartbreaking."

It's hard to assess the electoral impact, if any. Democratic voters have, in the past, been far more likely to use mail ballots, especially in the 2020 pandemic year.

But this year, the party here has actually been dissuading its voters from using mail ballots unless absolutely necessary, because of new rules adopted by the state legislature that they fear could result in ballots being rejected.

The Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that requires two witnesses or a notary's signature; a photocopied ID placed inside a clear sleeve; a voter's signature; and three stamps totalling $1.77 US. 

"If it's not done right, it'll be invalidated," Kline said.

The upshot is that counties in the state will have to reprint ballots, without Kennedy's name, at their own expense. That's 100 counties, using 2,348 different ballot lists, totalling an estimated three million copies.