A federal judge left North Carolina’s strict mail-in ballot rules in place for the midterms, rejecting a late challenge after the election had already begun.
Judge Thomas D. Shroeder ruled Monday that the state may keep its tightened absentee procedures through November’s election, The Hill reported. The rules require signature matching and block counting of ballots whose inner envelopes are not properly sealed.
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein blasted the changes. The judge said plaintiffs waited too long and that courts should not rewrite election rules once voting is underway.
North Carolina’s state board of elections updated the procedures just before ballots went out in September. County officials now must disqualify ballots when the signature does not match the name on the voter’s application. They also must refuse to count ballots if the inner envelope is not sealed correctly.
Shroeder declined to rewrite the rules again this close to Election Day. He pointed straight to long-standing Supreme Court guidance on late judicial interference.
The judge wrote:
"The Supreme Court has repeatedly admonished lower courts that they ‘should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election,’"
He added that the calendar left no room for another shift.
Shroeder wrote:
"Here, ‘[t]he election is not merely upcoming; it has already started.’"
That timing point carried the day. The board’s September update came as ballots were already heading out. A lawsuit filed after that window asked a federal court to unwind the signature and seal checks while voters were already casting absentee ballots. The court said no.
Stein, a Democrat, told The Hill the board’s changes were “a slap in the face to voters.” He also said the decision was circumventing state law.
The governor offered no alternative method in the reporting for verifying that a mailed ballot belongs to the voter who requested it. Signature comparison and a sealed inner envelope are basic chain-of-custody steps used to protect ballots that never pass through a polling place.
Republicans have pushed to tighten mail-in procedures since the surge in absentee voting during the COVID period. North Carolina’s board moved on two concrete defects: mismatched signatures and unsealed inner envelopes. Those are process failures, not abstract theory.
An NBC News analysis found mail-in ballot requests from North Carolina Democrats are 40 percent lower than at the same point in 2022. That drop lands alongside weaker confidence in the U.S. Postal Service among Democratic voters.
A September NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found just 60 percent of Democrats confident the Postal Service will deliver election mail on time. That figure was 86 percent in 2024. Lower request volume and lower delivery confidence both point to a party less locked into mail voting than it was two and four years ago.
The open U.S. Senate race remains a national focus. Decision Desk HQ, a nonpartisan forecaster and partner of The Hill, gives Democrat and former Gov. Roy Cooper an 84 percent chance of defeating Republican Michael Whatley. Mail rules still matter in a state with competitive congressional contests, even when one statewide forecast leans heavily one way.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud. He has voted by mail in Florida. Earlier this year he sought to change mail-in rules by executive order. The Supreme Court ruled those changes could not take effect for the midterms.
North Carolina’s fight is different. It is a state board tightening verification on ballots already moving through the system, then a federal judge refusing to unwind that work after voting started. Shroeder did not invent a new doctrine. He applied the Supreme Court’s repeated warning against judicial edits on the eve of an election.
Plaintiffs wanted the signature match and sealed-envelope rules stripped out after the board had already acted and after ballots had been mailed. The court held that delay against them. Election administrators and voters both need fixed rules once ballots are in the mail. Changing the checklist midstream invites confusion and unequal treatment across counties.
The operative updates are narrow and concrete. First, a ballot can be disqualified when the signature does not match the name on the voter’s application. Second, county election officials are directed not to count a ballot if the inner envelope is not properly sealed.
Those steps target two failure points that matter only because the voter is not standing in front of a poll worker. A mismatched signature raises a simple question: did the person who requested the ballot cast it? An unsealed inner envelope breaks the privacy and integrity package designed for absentee voting. Telling counties to enforce both is ordinary administration, not a novel penalty.
Stein framed the board’s move as an insult and as a dodge around state law. The judicial order, as reported, rested on timing and on Supreme Court guidance, not on a full rewrite of North Carolina election statutes from the bench. The election had started. The plaintiffs were late. The rules stay.
Clean elections depend on rules that do not move after ballots go out. North Carolina’s signature and seal checks remain in force for November, and voters who follow the instructions will have their ballots counted under the same standard in every county.
