The first general election ballots for the 2024 presidential race went out this week in Alabama, the first state to do so with the November contest less than two months away.
“We’re ready to go,” said Sharon Long, deputy clerk in the Jefferson County, Alabama, circuit clerk’s office.
Long said Tuesday that her office had received ballots and will begin mailing absentee ballots on Wednesday morning to voters who applied for them and to overseas and military voters. Voters also can come to their election office, complete the application, and even submit a ballot in person.
“Military and overseas voters may now choose to receive their ballots for Federal offices either electronically, by regular U.S. mail, or by commercial carrier,” Alabama’s website says.
Absentee ballots themselves that are “returned in-person must be received by the county absentee election manager by close of business on the day before the election,” on Nov. 4, the office said. Meanwhile, absentee ballots returned by mail have to be received by no later than noon on Nov. 5, Election Day itself, he added.
The state also had initiated new restrictions on who can assist a voter with an application for such a ballot as Alabama is one of several Republican-led states imposing new limits on voter assistance. The law, SB1, makes it illegal to distribute an absentee ballot application that is prefilled with information such as the voter’s name or to return another person’s absentee ballot application.
North Carolina would have been the first state to send out mail-in ballots, but a judge last week ruled that it must delay mailing them out to voters after a challenge from Robert F. Kennedy, an independent presidential candidate who suspended his campaign last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump. Kennedy had sought to keep his name off ballots in the likely battleground state.
Earlier this week, North Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled that ballots in the state must be reprinted without Kennedy’s name on them. Before the Kennedy legal challenges, the state was slated to send out ballots by mail on Sept. 6.
The National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State wrote that they have “ongoing concerns” about USPS’s ability to perform ahead of the Nov. 5 contest, according to a letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
Issues affecting mail delivery in recent months “has affected a range of election mail, including informational mailers about critical election information and voter address confirmation cards, as well as ballots,” their letter reads.
