N.D. accommodates overseas military absentee ballots

BISMARCK (AP) — North Dakota will be certifying Nov. 2 election results on the last possible day to accommodate military absentee ballots that were sent out late, Secretary of State Al Jaeger said.

South Dakota sent all of its ballots on time, Chris Nelson, that state’s secretary of state, said in a news release.

Several states and U.S. territories did not get overseas and military ballots sent on time this year, prompting the Justice Department to sue or negotiate out-of-court agreements. North Dakota was one state that reached an agreement.

The law requires that ballots be sent to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before a federal election so jurisdictions have time to count those ballots.

This year the 45th day fell on a Saturday. Thirteen county auditors in North Dakota did not send out ballots that weekend but instead waited until the following Monday. Jaeger told The Bismarck Tribune that about 30 ballots were affected, a small portion of the more than 65,000 ballots that were sent out late nationwide.

Saturday “is not a normal government working day and no one from the federal government had ever indicated that it was not acceptable to wait until the first working day after the deadline, which is the normal operating procedure provided for in North Dakota law,” Jaeger said.

The state Canvassing Board, which certifies election results, is meeting almost two weeks after the election to allow more time for the affected ballots to arrive, Jaeger said.

Nelson said in a statement that South Dakota was one of the first states in the nation to meet the ballot-sending deadline. The first ballots were sent out on Sept. 2, more than two weeks before the deadline, he said.

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