The change of Democratic presidential candidates at the top of the ticket isn’t causing the Guilford County Board of Elections Department any headaches. It happened well before it would have any impact on the process for the creation of and the sending out of ballots by Guilford County Elections Director Charlie Collicutt and his staff.

Even though there’s early voting – and absentee ballots that must be sent out before that – the elections department still has plenty of time before the deadline.

“There’s a difference between state and federal law,” Collicutt said.

Current North Carolina law calls for absentee ballots to be sent out at least 60 days before the election, while federal law, covering all states, of course, requires absentee ballots be sent out at least 45 days before the election. If there are some last-minute changes or considerations that affect ballots across the state, he said, state officials would be able to move back the state’s deadline as long as it was in compliance with the deadline established by federal law.

“There is some wiggle room,” Collicutt said.

Collicutt also said the replacement of President Joe Biden by Vice President Kamala Harris on the 2024 ballot therefore hasn’t caused his department any grief. He said there are still other ballot measures likely to come in for the upcoming ballot – like an ABC measure in Pleasant Garden and a parks and recreation bond for the City of Burlington.

The election director said he believes the last ballot information that will come this year will be the official presidential nomination of the Democratic National Convention in a few weeks.

The absentee ballots are the first ones that must be printed up and sent out, and, in this state, he said, voters have to request absentee ballots in order to get them.

“They go largely to the military and civilians overseas,“ he said, adding that anyone can get one.

“You don’t need an excuse, but you do need to make a request,” he said.

Collicutt, who has served as the director of the department for 10 years, said that, in his time in that role, there’s never been an instance of candidates changing after the county’s ballots were created and sent out.

He added that, if Biden had dropped out just days before the election and then been replaced by Harris, those votes for Biden would have essentially gone to Harris.

“That’s because, technically, you’re voting for electors who then cast the votes,” Collicutt said.

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