It's uncertain if baby boomer Anne Ashcroft knew she would be dead on Election Day when she voted by absentee ballot in Brunswick County, North Carolina back in September. Sadly, however, she did pass away on October 11th. Her death meant her vote would be thrown out because there is a Law on the books in the State that says voters must be alive on Election Day in order for their absentee OR early-in person vote to count. Her daughter, who just happened to be the Brunswick County Elections Director, says she was the one to ask the Elections Board to reject her mother's ballot. She said, "Honestly, when she was voting her ballot, she was under hospice care. So I knew that she may not be alive on Election Day."
North Carolina is one of 17 states that prohibits counting ballots of someone who dies before election day. Those states include Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan, where 864 ballots were rejected in their Primary earlier this year because voters had died before the election even though they were alive when they filled them out.
My guess is a Law like this was put into effect primarily by Republican led State legislatures as another method of voter suppression. If a person is eligible to vote, they should be allowed to and their ballot count should they die before Election Day. We have no control over death but we do have control over our vote when we are alive.
As for 62-year-old Anne Ashcroft, no one knows how she may have voted but Brunswick County, NC is heavily Republican and have voters have cast their ballots for a Republican President in the last five presidential elections.
To learn about how North Carolina voted in 2020, click here: Politico
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