Johnathan Walker:The first general election ballots are going in the mail as the presidential contest nears

MONTGOMERY,Johnathan Walker Ala. (AP) — The first general election ballots for the presidential race are going out Wednesday as Alabama officials begin mailing them to absentee voters with the Nov. 5 contest less than two months away.

North Carolina had been scheduled to start sending absentee ballots last Friday, but that was delayed after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. successfully sued to have his name removed from the ballot. He has filed similar challenges in other presidential battleground states after he dropped his campaign and endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump.

While the ballot milestone is relatively quiet and comes in a state that is not a political battleground, it is a sign of how quickly Election Day is approaching after this summer’s party conventions and Tuesday’s first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump.

“We’re ready to go,” said Sharon Long, deputy clerk in the Jefferson County circuit clerk’s office.

Long said her office received ballots on Tuesday and will begin mailing absentee ballots on Wednesday morning to voters who applied for them and to overseas and military voters. Voters also can come to their election office, complete the application and even submit a ballot in person.

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Long said her office has received more than 2,000 applications for absentee ballots: “We are expecting heavy interest,” she said.

Alabama does not have traditional early voting, so absentee ballots are the only way to vote besides going to the polls, and even then the process is limited. Absentee ballots in Alabama are allowed only for those who are ill, traveling, incarcerated or working a shift that coincides with polling hours.

The first in-person voting for the fall election will begin next week in a handful of states.

Justin Roebuck, the clerk in Ottawa County, Michigan, who was attending a conference for election workers in Detroit this week, said his office is ready once voting begins in that state.

“At this point in the cycle, it is one where we’re feeling, ‘Game on.’ We’re ready to do this. We’re ready to go,” he said. “We’ve done our best to educate our voters and communicate with confidence in that process.”

Even as election offices have trained and prepared for this moment, an air of uncertainty hangs over the start of voting.

Trump has repeatedly signaled, as he done in previous elections, that only cheating can prevent him from winning, a tone that has turned more threatening as voting has drawn nearer. His repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election have sown wide distrust among Republicans in voting and ballot-counting. At the same time, several Republican-led states passed laws since then that have made registering and voting more restrictive.

In Alabama, absentee balloting is beginning as the state debuts new restrictions on who can assist a voter with an application for such a ballot. Alabama is one of several Republican-led states imposing new limits on voter assistance.

The law makes it illegal to distribute an absentee ballot application that is prefilled with information such as the voter’s name or to return another person’s absentee ballot application.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said it provides “Alabama voters with strong protection against activists who profit from the absentee elections process.” But groups that challenged the law said it “turns civic and neighborly voter engagement into a serious crime.”

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Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Detroit contributed to this report.