NC constitutional amendments: Legislature approves citizen-only voting, rejects repeal of Jim Crow literacy test law

North Carolina voters will be asked to approved at least one constitutional amendment when they go to the polls this fall — to reaffirm the state's citizen-only voting rules — after state lawmakers approved the proposal with broad bipartisan support Thursday.

Four other proposed constitutional amendments failed to pass in the rushed final days of the legislative session, which saw final votes cast Thursday evening in both the House and the Senate.

One was a change racial justice advocates have pushed for decades, to repeal a racist Jim Crow era law that's currently unenforceable but remains enshrined in the state constitution. The others were more standard political fare. All failed to pass, for various reasons.

• Literacy test repeal: Like many states, North Carolina enacted literacy test rules after Reconstruction, during the period now known as the Jim Crow era. They were abused for generations to stop Black people and other minorities from voting. The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests, as part of the Civil Rights Movement, but North Carolina voters chose in the 1970 elections to keep the rules anyway. The suggestion to ask voters in 2024 to repeal them passed the House unanimously Thursday, but was rejected by the Senate.
• Governor's powers: The amendment would've restricted the governor's authority to fill executive branch vacancies, the latest in a long series of efforts by the legislature to weaken the power of the governor. It failed to get a vote in the House, and was never proposed by the Senate.
• Voter ID: The amendment would've added voter ID rules for mail-in voters to the state constitution. That's already required by state law, but putting it in the constitution would make it harder for judges or a future legislature to undo. It passed the Senate but failed to receive a vote in the House.
• Income tax cap: The amendment would've lowered the maximum possible income tax rate from 7% to 5%. It passed the Senate but failed to receive a vote in the House.

Senate leader Phil Berger said there's a chance lawmakers could try to come back in late July or early August to try approving those amendments once more, but House Speaker Tim Moore preemptively offered a defense should that effort fail once more.

"It's possible," Moore said of a vote in the next month or so to add more amendments to the ballot this year. "But, you know, the main amendment that we wanted to see pass was the non-citizen voting."

The only amendment that did pass Thursday, that voting rights proposal wouldn't change any rules in practice. The state constitution already says only citizens may vote, and the proposed amendment would say the same thing but with slightly different language.

Supporters point to a handful of cities in other states that are letting non-citizen residents vote in local elections like for city council. That wouldn't be possible in North Carolina, but supporters of the amendment say it's needed regardless to send a message opposing that idea in general.

Republican lawmakers in particular say they've been getting contacted by many of their voters who have heard about the trend in other states and are worried about it happening here. But since the amendment wouldn't make any real changes, critics have accused the GOP of using the amendment to trick voters into wrongfully believing that non-citizens can vote, in an effort to boost conservative voter turnout this November.

But in the end most Democrats at the legislature supported putting that amendment on the ballot, as did all Republicans. It passed with broad bipartisan support: 104-12 in the House and 40-4 in the Senate.

Literacy test repeal

If the legislature does try a second attempt at getting more amendments on the ballot this summer, Berger said Thursday, it would likely only be for the voter ID and income tax amendments, and maybe the proposal restricting the governor's powers — but not the literacy test repeal, despite the 109-0 vote in the House to approve it.

State lawmakers proposed a constitutional amendment in 1970 asking voters to get rid of the literacy test rules, but voters elected to keep those rules in place. The legislature has never again put it up for a popular vote. Privately, politicians on both sides of the aisle have long expressed fears that such a vote would fail and embarrass the state.

On Thursday Rep. Terry Brown, D-Mecklenburg, thanked GOP leadership for getting behind the idea publicly. "The reasons why this was implemented in the past are not representative of this state we all know and love," he said.

Rep. Jarrod Lowery, R-Robeson, is a member of the Lumbee Tribe and said his grandfather was prevented from voting for decades, due to the literacy test rules. "My grandfather, who I lived with for a large portion of my life, was born in 1921," Lowery said. "When he turned 21 years old and was allowed to vote, in 1942, he was allowed to go fight in World War II. But he wasn’t allowed to vote."

A few hours later, when reporters asked Berger why he didn't allow the repeal to be voted on in the Senate, he said it was too last-minute. The proposal had passed a House committee in March 2023 but laid dormant ever since then, until it was suddenly added to the House calendar Thursday then quickly pushed through.

"It kind of popped up at the last minute," Berger said. "Nobody had talked about it."

But when the amendment was filed more than a year ago, Berger said at the time he was supportive of the idea. Identical proposals to repeal the literacy test were filed in each chamber; the one in the Senate has more of that chamber's members are signed on as co-sponsors. "Opinions have changed over the past 50 years," Berger said in March 2023, WRAL reported. "I think a majority of the people in the state of North Carolina will recognize why it's there and why it needs to be removed."

But it appears that fears about public opposition to the idea might still linger.

Carolina Partnership for Reform, a political dark money group closely associated with state Senate GOP leadership, conducted a poll earlier this month to gauge public support for five potential constitutional amendments — including the literacy test repeal.

It had the lowest amount of support among the five, the poll found — with 50% saying they'd be in favor, 39% saying they want to keep literacy tests on the books, and the other 11% undecided.