RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina counties started distributing absentee ballots Tuesday for the November general election to those who requested them, roughly two weeks later than anticipated as a legal challenge forced delays.

Election officials in all 100 counties planned to mail out the first ballots to regular state residents starting Tuesday. Ballots to military and overseas voters requesting them — mostly transmitted electronically — went out starting this past Friday.

In all, more than 207,000 absentee ballot requests had been received as of early Monday, according to the State Board of Elections. More than 19,000 had come from military and overseas voters. Some completed ballots already have been returned.

State law directed that the first absentee ballots were to go out on Sept. 6, which would have made North Carolina the first in the nation to send out ballots for the fall elections. But appeals court judges prevented ballots containing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from going out after he sought his removal as a presidential candidate. That caused election officials statewide to print new ballots and reassemble absentee voter packets.

The board decided to begin the distribution of military and absentee ballots sooner than traditional mail-in ballots to ensure that the state complied with a federal law requiring ballots be transmitted to these categories of voters by Sept. 21.

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The deadline to request a traditional absentee ballot by mail is Oct. 29. A law taking effect this year says those mail-in absentee ballots for most voters must be received by election officials in person or through the mail by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. Military and overseas voters have different request and return deadlines.

North Carolina absentee ballots were very popular during the 2020 general election due to COVID-19, with about 1 million such ballots cast. The number fell to roughly 188,000 for the November 2022 midterm election.

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