When Carrie Conley learned that her vote in the 2024 election was at risk of being thrown out, the news did not come to her through the mail or from any official source.
She was scrolling through social media when she came upon a post from the progressive advocacy group Carolina Forward.
The post referred to challenges of overseas and military votes brought by Jefferson Griffin, an N.C. Court of Appeals judge and Republican candidate for N.C. Supreme Court.
As the spouse of a U.S. Army soldier living in Italy, that caught Conley’s attention. She later confirmed that her vote was in fact being challenged.
Conley said she was “perplexed, surprised, frustrated” to find out her vote might not count.
For more than two decades, Conley has voted in Guilford County, according to online voting records. In the past, she has taken advantage of absentee voting while attending college at Appalachian State University and during her time moving with her husband for his military service obligations.
Her vote is being challenged because she did not include a copy of a photo ID when she submitted her ballot.
While photo ID is required for both in-person and absentee voters, a rule adopted by the N.C. State of Board of Elections states this does not apply to military or overseas voters.
However, the N.C. Supreme Court decided earlier this month that those casting absentee ballots abroad must comply with photo ID laws and would be given 30 days to do so following mailing of formal notification.
Conley is part of a class action lawsuit filed April 14 to block the state elections board from carrying out the court’s order.
She and the other plaintiffs, which include other North Carolina voters as well as the N.C. League of Women Voters, argue that requiring them to provide the additional verification violates their rights because such a requirement was not in place when they voted.
In an interview on Wednesday, Conley herself also spoke of the unfairness of the process.
She pointed out that while her vote was challenged, the ballots of other military spouses she knew were not.
Griffin only filed protests of overseas and military votes in a few of the state's more populous, Democratic-leaning counties.
The state elections board has said that the only protests filed by the statutory deadline were those in Guilford County, which voted for Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs over Griffin by a margin of 62%-38%.
Conley said she decided to fight because she wanted to stand up for herself and others.
“I just wanted to help. I wanted to do what I could,” Conley said. “It’s not just me. It’s a whole group of voters who are being targeted.”
Like Conley, most members of the remaining group of challenged voters are from Guilford County.
The state elections board has found that there are 1,409 military and overseas voters who need to be notified. All of them are in Guilford County.
The second, smaller group consists of nonresident voters. The board estimates that category includes 266 people in 53 counties across the state, with 15 apiece in Guilford and Forsyth counties.
While the Supreme Court holding requires dismissal of those nonresident votes, the state elections board has proposed a review of documents and a sending of notices to verify the residency status of those voters.
The N.C. Supreme Court race between Riggs and Griffin has spawned a months-long legal battle in both state and federal courts.
When all the votes were tallied in November, Riggs defeated Griffin by a margin of a little more than 700 votes out of 5.5 million cast.
Griffin requested two recounts, which both affirmed Riggs’ victory.
At the same time, Griffin filed election protests throughout the state calling into question the validity of tens of thousands of ballots for various reasons.
Some of these focused on alleged votes illegally cast by felons, dead people and people who were not registered.
Those protests were handled mostly by county elections board, with some making their way to the state. In December, the Guilford County Board of Elections voted unanimously to reject the protests related to deceased, felon and unregistered voters after holding a hearing.
In the months since, the legal fight has centered on three categories of ballots: those cast by people whose registration did not include a driver’s license number or Social Security number; the military and overseas absentee voters; and the nonresident voters.
Nonresident in this case refers to voters who attested in their ballot applications that they were U.S. citizens who had never lived in the United States.
The state board of elections, citing state law, provides guidance that children of North Carolina residents living abroad may use their parent’s state address for voting, provided the prospective voter has not registered in another state.
On April 11, the N.C. Supreme Court threw out Griffin’s challenge against the voters with the missing registration information, which covered roughly 60,000 voters and was the largest category of votes challenged.
The court faulted election officials for the missing information on the registrations and ruled that mistakes of the board would not be held against voters.
However, the court allowed the other two challenges to proceed by requiring those voters to take corrective action and giving them 30 days from the time they receive written notice.
For the nonresident voters, the Supreme Court deferred to the ruling of the N.C. Court of Appeals, finding that “allowing individuals to vote in our state-federal elections who have never been domiciled or resided in North Carolina or expressed an intent to live in North Carolina violated the plain language of (the North Carolina Constitution).”
On Tuesday, the state board of elections outlined its plan for implementing the court’s directives in a legal filing.
The board is directing the Guilford County elections board to review documents from the military and overseas voters and to then mail notices to those individuals who would need to meet photo ID requirements within 30 days.
For the nonresident voters, the local election boards will review the documentation related to those voters in order to confirm the residency status of the apparent nonresidents.
The board pointed to media reports of voters who had wrongly been included in the group of nonresidents.
After removing confirmed residents from the count, the elections boards would then send notifications to remaining challenged voters and allowing them 30 days to file affidavits confirming residence in state.
Guilford County Elections Director Charlie Collicutt said in an email Thursday that the local board is proceeding with the state board’s instructions on overseas and military voters.
As for the nonresidents, Collicutt said “there may still be some ongoing issues in the courts as to the scope and possible research and notification.”
Collicutt described the board as being “in a holding pattern” while it waits for new information, including the potential creation of a portal that will allow voters to submit photo IDs.
He also noted that the decisions by the courts could also change their course.
“We are always at the mercy of a future court order to stop, alter or continue,” he said.
Questions about how exactly the process will be resolved still remain. While the state board has said the only overseas and military voters who need to be notified are the 1,409 in Guilford County, Griffin is seeking to expand that pool to include voters in Forsyth, Durham, Buncombe, New Hanover and Cumberland counties.
Griffin is also calling for the courts to halt the corrective process for the nonresident voters.
Anne Tindall, an attorney for Conley and the other class action plaintiffs, said they will oppose any effort to require the challenged voters to take additional actions to have their votes validated.
"Our position is that it remains fundamentally unfair to retroactively apply a complete reversal of state voting rules to any voters who followed the rules in place when they cast their ballots," Tindall said in an email.
For her part, Conley said she is optimistic about her chances of succeeding in her case.
“I am feeling hopeful because I feel like the law will eventually be on my side,” Conley said. “I followed the rule so to me it seems like a cut and dry case.”
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