Bins full of absentee ballots await Wake County Board of Elections review in November 2024. (Photo: Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline)
By Lynn Bonner
A new directive to North Carolina county boards of election puts more ballots in jeopardy of being discarded, though voters will have the chance to fill out another.
Absentee ballots that arrive in the wrong envelope, or that arrive unsealed in the correct envelope, will no longer automatically count but will be rejected and new ballots issued, the state Board of Elections decided in a Friday party-line vote.
The absentee ballot package comes with two envelopes — an inner envelope for the ballot and an outer envelope to mail it back in.
Ronald Hayes, left, and his son Shemar Hayes. (Photos: Ronald Hayes)
By Greg Childress
Ronald Hayes was cautious when he talked to a reporter this week about the political TV advertisement he appears in, talking about the death of his son Shemar, a college football player who was murdered in Charlotte in March 2024 at age 23.
“I have already been swindled into an ad that was about politics, which I don’t want to be about,” Hayes told NC Newsline on Monday.
Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) talks to reporters as he arrives for a House Republican conference in the basement of the U.S. Capitol on September 01, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Clayton Henkel
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday 413-2 to censure Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican representing western North Carolina, for his inappropriate conduct towards two female staffers working in his office.
Edwards stood in the well of the House to hear the reading of censure after the vote.
North Carolina lawmakers are trying to navigate how to best protect minors from hemp-derived cannabinoids, while also preparing for a future that could include some form of legal cannabis.(Photo: Amanda Watford/Stateline)
By Clayton Henkel
When members of the North Carolina House and Senate reconvene in November, they will be faced with having to decide how to regulate intoxicating hemp products. The two chambers were at odds in July over House Bill 328, which would ban hemp with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC and prohibit the sale of any hemp consumables, including CBD, to anyone under 21.
House members opted to wait until after November’s midterm elections, not wanting to upset a $4 billion industry that employs 16,000 people in North Carolina.
In Washington, the hemp industry received a one-month reprieve this week from a national ban on intoxicating hemp products as part of a short-term funding bill.
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