Arnett v. NC BOE

Mail-in ballots are sent in envelopes, and the envelopes are supposed to be examined to verify that they are sent by a legitimate voter and in time before the ballots are removed and counted. In this lawsuit, the North Carolina Republican Party (ncRp) claims that verification of the envelopes is not being conducted. Specifically, they make two claims: 1) that mail-in ballots are facing lesser scrutiny than in-person voting, which they argue violates the principle of equal protection under the law, and 2) that the envelopes for mail-in ballots are public records under the Public Records Act (PRA) and therefore must be made public. They seek a temporary injunction requiring these changes to vote-counting procedure now, to remain in force while the court considers the merits of this lawsuit.

The North Carolina Democratic Party (ncDp) requests to be part of the case, and starts to contradict some of ncRp's claims. They claim that the scrutiny of mail-in ballots that ncRp wants to see is scheduled by law to occur on election day and not before, that the law only allows for public scrutiny of the ballots themselves not of the envelopes they are mailed in; and that the dcRp had months to bring these challenges to procedure but inapproperiately waited until the middle of an ongoing election. Most importantly, they argued that these issues (except the PRA issue) should by law be decided by a three-judge panel, not before only a single judge.

Judge A. Graham Shirley pointed out that the PRA "requires a party who files a civil action under the Public Rights Act to initiate mediation" with the county election boards. Since ncRp hadn't done that, the court couldn't do anything for them until they did. Judge Shirley also ruled that election procedures "do not volate the equal protection rights of voters." The ncRp tried to amend their complaint, but it made no difference to the ruling. Judge Shirley denied the ncRp's request for a court order.