Election integrity or voter suppression? NC Senate approves big changes for future elections

Two wide-ranging, GOP-backed election bills passed the state Senate Wednesday over objections from Democrats who say the changes will lead to gridlock and could force thousands of legitimate ballots to be thrown in the trash in future elections.

Republicans, however, say the changes are needed to improve voters’ faith in elections. The bills next go to the state House, where they're expected to also pass but possibly with some tweaks.

Senate Bill 747 would make a number of changes to the rules for elections, largely around mail-in voting. Senate Bill 749 would overhaul the State Board of Elections to take away the governor's influence over the board — a change that’s highly similar to other laws Republicans have already passed in recent years, only to see them struck down in court as unconstitutional.

Both bills passed Wednesday along party lines, with all Republicans in favor and all Democrats opposed.

"Today’s vote shows that Democrats don’t care about election integrity," Sen. Warren Daniel, R-Burke, a top elections official, said in a press release Wednesday night. "With the approval of Senate Bills 747 and 749, Senate Republicans are removing political gamesmanship from election administration and putting integrity above all."

Some of the main tenets of Senate Bill 747, of which Daniel is the lead sponsor, were designed to assuage conservative voters who lost faith in elections after former President Donald Trump made claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him. Many of his claims revolved around about mail-in voting. Courts shot down dozens of his claims for lack of evidence, but polls show many conservative voters still believe them.

One of the changes in SB 747 would require mail-in ballots to be counted by Election Night, eliminating the state’s current three-day grace period that allows for the slow U.S. Postal Service to get them delivered.

The grace period was approved unanimously by the legislature in 2009. But it now faces opposition from Republicans, due in part to the conspiracy theories that flourished in conservative circles after Trump incorrectly declared himself the winner of the 2020 election on Election Night — before mail-in ballots had finished being counted in several key swing states where he ended up losing.

Although Trump won North Carolina, Republican legislators became upset when the State Elections Board settled a lawsuit from liberal groups during the election that further extended the grace period, for 2020 only, due to COVID-19 concerns.

That vote was unanimous, with all of the election board’s Republican and Democratic members signing off on the settlement. GOP legislators have since claimed it was an act of partisan collusion intended to help Democrats — and one that made some voters think fraud was happening.

“The result of that action was to put the results of the election in doubt,” Daniel said during Wednesday's debate on the bill. “... Leaving voters in the dark about the outcome harms the integrity of the process.”

Democrats have responded that the real threat to voter integrity is the idea that the state would throw legitimate ballots in the trash, simply because they arrived a couple days late in the mail. No election results are ever made official until a minimum of 10 days after an election, no matter what. So they say there’s no harm to a three-day grace period for mail-in ballots to continue to be delivered and counted.

“We know that this change will result in valid votes being thrown away,” said Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg. “Whose votes? We don’t know for sure. Some will be Republican ballots, some will be Democratic, some will be independents. … And this bill will force election workers, if that ballot arrives after Election Day, to throw it in the trash. It’s not trash.”

Republicans did allow Democrats some minor tweaks to the bill Wednesday, responding to concerns that could help people of either party. For example, the Senate unanimously approved an amendment by Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, to have people provide their phone number and email when requesting a mail-in ballot. That would help the state be even more confident about that person’s identity, she said, and would also make it easier to contact the voter if there’s an issue with their mail-in ballot that they need to address.

But despite some small shows of bipartisanship like that, Democrats were still largely opposed to the bill.

"Now in this MAGA-inspired world that we have, with the ex-president and his lawyers coming to town to spread misinformation, it suddenly seems like this is somewhere that we should attack," Marcus said, referencing the “make America great again” slogan made popular by Trump. "I think that's sad, and I think that's wrong."

While Republicans approved two Democratic-backed amendments to the bill, they shot down seven others. The failed amendments included one from Sen. Mary Wills Bode, D-Granville, to delay some of the changes until after the 2024 elections — after she said the GOP-backed plan “will inject immense confusion, chaos and conflicts into the voting process for North Carolinians, and in so doing massively erode confidence in our elections.”

In addition to moving up the deadline for mail-in ballots, SB 747 would also make it more likely that mail-in ballots that do arrive on time would also be thrown out, by requiring signature-matching software to be used.

Election experts say that since most North Carolinians register to vote at the DMV — and sign on the tiny electronic pads there — that means those signatures on file with the state won’t end up looking anything like their real signatures that they’d sign with pen and paper when completing their ballots.

Critics say the signature-matching rule wouldn’t only cause legitimate ballots to be thrown out, but that it’s also unnecessary for confirming a voter’s real identity. State law already requires two witnesses sign people’s mail-in ballots confirming their identity. And now that voter ID has been reinstated, those rules will also require people who vote by mail to send in a photocopy of their driver’s license, in addition to the witness signatures.

Changes to elections board

Eliminating the governor's control over elections administration is perhaps even more contentious than the changes to mail-in voting. The plan would eliminate the state law that gives a tie-breaking vote on the board to the political party that holds the governor's office, and instead create an evenly tied board with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans.

The state’s current governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat. That means Democrats will have control over the state elections board in the 2024 elections, unless this change becomes law before then. Republicans said that makes voters nervous; Democrats have pointed out that they also controlled the elections board in 2020 when Trump won North Carolina — and that Republicans controlled the board in 2016 when Cooper narrowly defeated the Republican incumbent governor, Pat McCrory.

Republican legislators were adamant, however, that they want to change the system before the 2024 elections.

“I cannot fathom that our founding fathers thought it was more constitutional to have one party, whether it be Republican or Democrat, in control of the elections process," said Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus, the bill's lead sponsor. "… I submit to you that what 749 is proposing is far more constitutional than what we have today.”

But that's simply not true, said Sen. Dan Blue, D-Wake, the top Senate Democrat. Blue said the changes are absolutely unconstitutional, and that's not just his opinion.

In all three versions of the state constitution — when it was written in the 1700s, rewritten in the 1800s and rewritten again in 1970 — the state's leaders set the elections board up the same way it is now, Blue said. Multiple state Supreme Court decisions have shot down attempts to change the board to something similar to what's being proposed again now, he said, under both Democratic and Republican court majorities. And just a few years ago when Republican lawmakers asked voters to change the state constitution so that a similar proposal could go through, it was overwhelmingly rejected. Two-thirds of voters opposed the idea.

"This move is dangerous, and it’s antithetical to the integrity of our elections," Blue said. "… It leaves us vulnerable to abuses of power by some future legislature and its leadership, and it undermines the trust that the citizens have placed on our government."