(Bloomberg) -- When the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in September that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. couldn’t appear on the state’s ballots after he dropped his US presidential bid, Derek Bowens had to scramble.
Bowens, the Durham County elections director, had already printed more than 145,000 absentee ballots. It cost $50,000 — a 25% markup on the normal cost — to quickly reprint them without Kennedy’s name. The litigation delayed North Carolina’s timeline for getting ballots to voters and cost counties $1 million combined, the state election board estimates.
Pressure is building as courts handle the surge of litigation targeting voting processes before the Nov. 5 election, particularly in swing states like North Carolina. Officials say that amid the normal flurry of pre-election activity, they’re preparing as best they can for legal developments that could force a sudden pivot.
“I’ve never watched so many cases,” said Joel Hondorp, the city clerk in Grand Rapids, Michigan, another battleground state contending with an uptick in election-related litigation.
Kennedy unsuccessfully sued to get his name off of Michigan’s ballots. Hondorp said the secretary of state’s office takes the lead in alerting local officials about court developments, but he also independently monitored the activity in Kennedy’s case, even signing up for his own account to access court dockets.
The Republican Party has several lawsuits pending against Michigan over the handling of absentee ballot defects, voter registration and poll watchers. Hondorp said he was watching to see how some of those other cases played out and whether they’d require last-minute trainings or other action by his office.
Zach Manifold, elections director for Gwinnett County, Georgia, in suburban Atlanta, said he and his colleagues are keeping an eye on lawsuits challenging recent rule changes adopted by the state’s election board that affect how ballots are counted and certified at the county level.
The Georgia state board voted 3-2 to require a hand count of ballots in addition to machine tabulation as well as a “reasonable inquiry” by officials before vote counts are formally certified to the state.
Manifold said his office is talking through options to incorporate the outcome of the court fights into their training materials and public-facing information. Ultimately, he said, local administrators have to rely on the secretary of state’s office for official guidance on any changes they need to make once the litigation ends.
A Fulton County Superior Court judge heard arguments this week in two cases related to the certification issue and other suits are pending over the hand count rule. The challengers, which include the Democratic Party, argue the changes conflict with state law and increase the risk of a chaotic and drawn-out post-election period.
It wasn’t immediately clear when the judge would decide and how long it would take for any appeals to play out.
“It’s not an ideal situation,” Manifold said of the late rule changes. But, he added, “we’re ready to make it happen, whatever we’ve gotta do.”
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