North Carolina elections official blocked her late mother’s vote

A North Carolina elections official had to block her own late mother’s absentee ballot in this month’s election, as state law specifies that all voters must be alive on Election Day, regardless of how the vote was cast.

Brunswick County Elections Director Sara Knotts called the move the “hardest thing I’ve done as an elections administrator” in a Friday Tweet after filing a challenge against her mother’s absentee ballot, using the hashtag “electionintegrity.”

Hardest thing I’ve done as an elections administrator: present a challenge against the absentee ballot cast by my mom. In NC, the qualifications to vote are judged on election day. She passed away from glioblastoma after submitting her ballot but before Nov 3. #electionintegrity

— Sara Knotts (@SaraKnotts1) November 13, 2020

Multiple Twitter users praised Knotts for her bravery and strong character, with one user writing, “I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

Last thing I would want is something like that to diminish people’s trust in the election process. And I guarantee someone would have called foul on the election director’s dead mom voting. People are always looking for a way to poke holes in our process. Not on my watch!

— Sara Knotts (@SaraKnotts1) November 13, 2020

The Brunswick County Board of Elections voted unanimously to discard the vote cast in the key battleground state by Knotts’s mother Anne Ashcraft, who passed away on Oct. 11 of a brain cancer after filing her absentee ballot in September.

“Honestly, when she was voting her ballot, she was under hospice care. So I knew that she may not be alive on Election Day,” Knotts said Monday in an interview with The Fayetteville Observer. “But I knew after she submitted it that if she passed away, I was going to challenge it. Just because I know how contentious this election was, and how much the talk in the media was about how you can’t trust the election process. I think just to maintain the integrity, I knew I was going to have to remove it if she passed away before Election Day.”

Knotts said that given the circumstances, she considered talking her mother out of casting a vote at all, but she decided against it as she knew how important voting was to Ashcraft.

Board members noted the personal nature of Knott’s filing as they voted, and her morality as an election worker.

“You might not have had recognized the name of ‘Sara Anne Ashcraft.’ It’s Sara’s mother. And Sara actually brought this challenge. And I think that speaks volumes to her integrity and the integrity of the elections staff here in Brunswick County. Thank you very much for your burden, Sara,” board member Randy Pelton said, the Observer reported.

President Trump, who lost the Nov. 3 election to Joe Biden but has refused to concede, was not declared the winner of North Carolina until Friday.