Few problems reported as 2023 elections offer first test of new voter ID rules in North Carolina
As voters head to the polls Tuesday to vote for mayors and town council members in dozens of cities all across North Carolina, many will be faced with an unfamiliar new requirement: Voter ID.
The requirement for voters to show photo identification comes after a decade of political and legal battles between supporters, who say it's needed to stop possible fraud, and opponents, who say it will prevent legitimate voters from casting a ballot.
So far in the ongoing 2023 municipal elections, public records from the state show the new rules haven't been too cumbersome on voters: Out of more than 150,000 ballots cast during early voting, only 64 were flagged for the voter lacking ID.
Those 64 voters were still allowed to cast ballots. Under the current version of the voter ID laws, people who lack ID can use what's known as a provisional ballot. To have that ballot be counted, they'll have to either show back up to their local county elections board office with a valid ID, or fill out a form explaining why they don't have identification. There are around a dozen acceptable reasons for lacking an ID, ranging from not having transportation to religious objections to photography.
"We will not turn anyone away," Karen Brinson Bell, the state's top elections official, told WRAL News. "There is a way that someone can cast their ballot in these municipal elections if they're registered municipal voter."
While the number of voters who came to the polls without ID was low, there's also no way of knowing how many didn't try voting at all because they knew they didn't have an acceptable ID — and mistakenly thought they wouldn't be able to vote.
Elections officials tried to get the word out, but they had little to no money to spend on an ad campaign, mailers or other such educational efforts. The new state budget does have some money for voter ID in it, but the legislature was months late in passing the budget, which only became law last month.
"Since the budget was not passed until October, we actually really had no funding to do any kind of outreach for the municipal elections," Brinson Bell said.
Looking ahead to 2024
Once these elections are over, Brinson Bell and other state elections officials will begin the work of preparing for the 2024 presidential elections. But that work will be complicated by the fact that most counties statewide have a local elections director who has been on the job for four years or less.
The lack of experience could compound issues as officials don't just need to work on educating people about voter ID but will also need to do all the regular work of handling campaign finance issues, training poll workers and more.
At the same time, the entire political leadership of the State Board of Elections, as well as all 100 county boards, could be thrown into chaos due to a new law that restructures the boards, taking away the ability of the governor and political parties to appoint those members, and instead giving that power to the state legislature. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has sued to stop the law from going into effect; Republican legislators said they needed to pass it to ensure confidence in elections.
Brinson Bell said elections workers like her and everyone under her do the day-to-day work of running elections without thinking about which party might benefit.
"I just hope that folks realize that, you know, our whole work is to ensure that people are able to exercise their right to vote," she said. "And that it doesn't matter where you are on that political spectrum. That doesn't matter to us — it's nonpartisan work for us."
10 years of voter ID lawsuits
There are still at least two lawsuits that could end up stopping voter ID from being used in the 2024 elections, one in state court and another in federal court.
As voter ID gets its test run this fall before the 2024 elections, the more lenient rules allowing people to cast provisional ballots without an ID were among changes the legislature settled on, to try to help the law survive legal challenges from civil rights groups and others.
Voter ID was originally passed by Republican legislators in a 2013 law that included wide-ranging changes to state elections laws beyond just voter ID. It was later struck down as unconstitutional, and voter ID was only ever used once, during the 2016 primaries.
Federal courts ruled that state legislators intentionally discriminated against Black voters when writing those 2013 election rules.
After losing in court, Republican lawmakers tried again — asking voters in 2018 to enshrine voter ID in the state constitution. That would protect it from future lawsuits in state court, as well as make it harder for future politicians to hypothetically undo.
The amendment passed with 55% of the vote but was quickly hit with three lawsuits, including the two that are still winding their way through the courts. The one in state court contends the amendment itself was illegitimate because the legislature that put it on the ballot only had enough votes to do so because of a GOP advantage in district lines that were later struck down as unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered, discriminating against Black voters.
That case made it to the state Supreme Court lat year, who ruled that the argument potentially has merit but needed to go back to trial for further examination of evidence. It's still awaiting further action in court. Meanwhile, a separate federal lawsuit against voter ID is making its way through those courts, arguing that the new 2018 law is racially discriminatory just as the 2013 law was.
The third lawsuit was resolved in controversial fashion within the last year. The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the new voter ID law was unconstitutional for racial discrimination. That ruling came from what was then a Democratic majority on the Supreme Court, and Republicans vocally criticized it as being politically motivated.
Then Republicans flipped control of the court in January and almost immediately undid that ruling and reinstated voter ID, in a ruling Democrats vocally criticized as being politically motivated.
It will now remain in place for the foreseeable future, at least pending any further court rulings.
