Stopping the disenfranchisement of military and overseas voters in North Carolina

New state election rules, if applied post-hoc, would presumptively eliminate votes cast in November 2024 for Supreme Court Seat Six

Protect Democracy and co-counsel are challenging recent North Carolina judicial decisions that would disenfranchise military and overseas voters in the race for North Carolina’s Supreme Court Seat Six, five months after their votes were cast, confirmed, and counted. Those voters, drawn from a selectively targeted subset of four counties, did everything election officials told them to do to lawfully vote in 2024. But their vote in one race is in jeopardy because the losing candidate has succeeded in his campaign to force state election officials to retroactively invalidate their votes. 

The lawsuit alleges that the state violates the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution by failing to apply the same rules for elections to all similarly situated voters, and violates the Due Process clause of the United States Constitution by changing the rules governing an election after the election has already been completed. 

This decision destroys a fundamental principle of democracy – that voters pick the winners of elections – based on legal arguments that are rife with procedural, logical, and factual errors, all while running roughshod over constitutional rights to fair and equal treatment.

We are bringing this suit to protect the voices of legally registered North Carolina voters who followed every rule to make sure their vote counts.

Anne Harden Tindall

Plaintiffs

Plaintiffs

The plaintiffs are the League of Women Voters of North Carolina and four North Carolina voters whose votes are being challenged despite being legally registered. They followed all of the rules in place for the November 2024 election and provided all information election officials asked of them:

• Carrie Conley is married to a United States soldier stationed in Italy. She was born and raised in North Carolina. She maintained her voter registration in Guilford County, N.C. and voted absentee in the November 2024 election using the online portal maintained by the North Carolina State Board of Elections for overseas voters.
• Lockhart “Hart” Webb was born and raised in North Carolina; she registered to vote in Guilford County as soon as she turned 18. In 2019, she moved to Switzerland with her husband when he started his Ph.D. program. She has voted from overseas without issue via the online portal for years. She and her family are in the process of moving back to Guilford County, N.C.
• Ella Kromm, of Durham, N.C., is currently teaching English on a one-year contract at an elementary school in Seville, Spain and will return to North Carolina this summer. She also was born and raised in the state and has been registered to vote there since she turned 18. She voted absentee in the November 2024 election using the online portal maintained by the North Carolina State Board of Elections for overseas voters.
• Gabriela Adler-Espino is employed as an after-school STEM teacher for the U.S. Air Force. She lives in Japan with her husband, who is an active-duty member of the U.S. Navy stationed in Okinawa. She moved to North Carolina in 2021, and registered to vote in Craven County North Carolina in June 2024 at the DMV, where she provided her passport and social security number.
• The League of Women Voters of North Carolina is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to facilitate informed and active participation in government by all Americans, increase understanding of major policy issues, and advocate for legislative changes and policies for the public good. Alana Pierce has been a member of the League of Women Voters of North Carolina since 2015, and even served as the Asheville-Buncombe League president for several years. Currently living in Montreal, Canada while she finishes her Ph.D. in business administration, Alana has been voting via absentee ballot from Montreal since 2019 without issue, and yet she and other members of the League who voted using the absentee process for overseas and military voters are included on the list of challenged voters.

Background

Background

The Equal Protection claim in this lawsuit is based on North Carolina presumptively tossing out votes for Supreme Court Seat Six cast via the state’s online portal for military and overseas voters – but only on ballots from four urban, Democratic-leaning counties, while leaving in place the votes in the same race from identically situated voters from North Carolina’s 96 other counties. The North Carolina courts have endorsed disenfranchisement that selectively and unfairly impacts voters who were more likely to have supported the Democratic candidate.

The Due Process claim relies on the obvious unfairness of North Carolina changing the rules for voting in an election after the election has already been completed. The state is retroactively applying those new rules to disenfranchise voters, even though those voters did everything the state asked of them prior to and on Election Day. More than five months after the 2024 election, the State of North Carolina is creating new election rules and presumptively tossing out already counted ballots under these brand new legal standards.

The lawsuit asks the Court to:

• Affirm that retroactive disenfranchisement violates the U.S. Constitution;
• Block the NCSBE from applying post-election criteria to ballots already lawfully cast;
• Ensure that voters are not forced to clear new legal hurdles to have their ballots counted.

Case documents

Case documents