Count Every Hero filed an amicus brief with the Secure Families Initiative in Kivett v. North Carolina State Board of Elections to protect the rights of military and overseas voters.
Raleigh, NC — Count Every Hero partnered with the Secure Families Initiative to urge the Supreme Court of North Carolina to deny Petitioners’ effort to overturn longstanding North Carolina military and overseas voting laws and procedures mere days before the general election after ballots had already been cast.
In the final days before the 2024 general election and long after military and overseas voters began receiving and returning their ballot, Petitioners challenged the constitutionality of the longstanding North Carolina Uniform Military Overseas Voters Act (UMOVA) in an attempt to force election officials not to count the ballots cast by North Carolinians with the “expressly guaranteed…right to register and vote in North Carolina.” In “their eleventh-hour request,” Petitioners threatened to “(1) deliberately disenfranchise some otherwise eligible overseas and military voters — including the children and dependents of Americans stationed and living overseas; (2) require additional verification and threaten disenfranchisement of thousands of [Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA)] voters; and (3) burden still further the rights of all absentee military and overseas voters.”
The former national security leaders argued that federal and state lawmakers specifically enacted UOCAVA and UMOVA, respectively, to ensure logistical barriers beyond their control did not disenfranchise those serving abroad and their eligible family members. The Petitioners sought relief “based on ‘absolutely no evidence that any person has ever fraudulently claimed [the challenged] exemption and actually voted in any North Carolina election.’” This relief would inflict “irreparable harm” on thousands of affected military and overseas voters who returned their ballots in accordance with federal and state law.
The Petitioners efforts set a potentially dangerous precedent, attempting to strip away the right to vote based on hyper-technical interpretations of the law governing eligibility that have been long settled. They also did so while providing no time to address the supposed issue they presented. For these reasons, the amici urged the Supreme Court to deny the Petitioner’s request.
Read the full amicus brief here.