GREENSBORO, N.C. — It is over. That's it.
No more mail-in ballots are allowed to be accepted in the state of North Carolina. The deadline was Thursday at 5 pm.
So, now what? Those mail-in ballots will now be looked over to make sure the postmark is correct, November 3, and the signatures are on it and the envelopes are intact.
Chances are, the ballots that came in by 5 pm Thursday will be counted Friday morning. Why wait? Thursday has been a busy day. For example, the Guilford County Board of Elections started their board meeting at 10 AM Thursday. That meeting is the official counting of mail-in ballots that came in on or after election day, and it's a process.
“We'll have a large staffing table and we'll begin open and separating the envelopes from the ballots and putting them through the tabulator. We may or may not get all the counting done. But then on Friday, which is the day of Canvass, we do the final aggregation of the results, if there are any irregularities we need to deal with, the board will sign the official documentation to certify the election,” said Charlie Collicutt, Guilford County Board of Elections Director.
Every Board of Elections is required to send their final results to the NC Board of Elections Friday, November 13. The state then looks at all the county results and certifies the election on November 24.