NC's most popular way of voting could grind to halt if new elections bill passes, critics say

Two bills proposing sweeping changes to future North Carolina elections faced some bipartisan opposition in a committee Thursday, but it also saw bipartisan agreement among lawmakers on changes.

A primary area of concern relates to early voting, the most popular method of voting in North Carolina. Election experts say it could grind to a halt if this bill becomes law.

Many counties have multiple early voting sites; in 2022 Wake County had 15 sites. This bill would make it easier for politically motivated board members to shut down early voting on a county-by-county basis — in which case there could only be one site per county.

Sara LaVere, president of the North Carolina Association of Directors of Elections, said the debate over how many early voting sites to have, and where to put them, frequently breaks down in a disagreement along party lines among county election board members.

Right now, those disagreements can be resolved by the State Board of Elections. But changing the state board as Republicans lawmakers want — so that it will have four Democrats and four Republicans — raises the possibility that no early voting plan would ever be selected. That would mean opening just a single early voting site, at the county office. People could potentially be forced to drive long distances and then wait for hours to vote early.

“I really don’t like to think that that could happen,” LaVere said in an interview Wednesday. “I think it’s a worst-case scenario.”

But critics fear that worst-case scenario could become commonplace if the bill becomes law.

Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, questioned what motivation Republicans in her home of Buncombe County — a heavily liberal area of the state, home to Asheville — would have to agree to any early voting plan. Kneecapping early voting there would obviously help Republicans, at least in statewide races. Likewise, she questioned what motivation Democrats would have to sign off on early voting plans in any of the state’s heavily conservative counties.

“There would be a huge incentive for the minority party not to agree to an early voting site, and therefore limit the availability of early voting for everyone,” Mayfield said.

LaVere, whose day job is working as Brunswick County’s elections director, traveled to the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee on Thursday to make public comments on the bill. She expressed her desire that lawmakers will work on changes with her group, which represents all 100 county election directors.

The committee approved some changes to both bills Thursday — with bipartisan support — and one of the committee’s Republican chairmen said more changes are likely to come. He invited Democrats to work with them on the bills, which are complex.

“As we go through the weekend, we’re happy to look at ways to make this a better bill,” Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus, said.

Newton was talking specifically about Senate Bill 747, which would make numerous changes to election rules around mail-in voting, poll observers, launching voter fraud allegations and more. But he also later suggested he and his fellow Republicans might be open to some changes on the other bill, Senate Bill 749, which would overhaul the state and county election boards.

There’s also concern among critics over a part of SB 747 that would require signature matching on mail-in ballots. Other states have used that, to mixed results, but North Carolina has always required mail-in voters to have witnesses instead. Since many voters sign up to vote at the DMV and sign on electronic pads, there’s concern that those signatures will look nothing like their real signatures that they sign when mailing in their ballot.

Sen. Mujtaba Mohammed, D-Mecklenburg, proposed an amendment Thursday that would eliminate the signature match requirement in addition to a long list of other changes. Newton didn’t allow it to get a vote but said they’d work on it over the next few days and plan to allow a similar amendment to get a chance when the bill goes to the Senate floor, likely next week.

Elections board overhaul

The election board overhaul bill would get rid of a state law that says whichever party holds the governor’s office also gets a majority on the state and county election boards. Republicans have pitched their new change as being a bipartisan solution with an even number of seats for both parties — although critics question whether that’s really accurate.

Kimberly Hardy, a North Carolina Democratic Party executive, said the proposal “violates the separation of powers” and that lawmakers have provided no real proof that such a drastic change is needed to strip the power away from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

“There’s been no merit to the arguments,” she said.

Critics say the prospect of tie votes on an evenly-divided elections board, while ostensibly helping neither party, could actually favor Republicans both explicitly and implicitly.

The potential for early voting shutdowns is one example. Republicans lawmakers already tried slashing early voting a decade ago, although that plan failed after a federal appeals court ruled that it was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters, who lean heavily Democratic.

The bill would also let the legislature hire a state elections director if the new board can’t agree on one within 30 days of the bill becoming law, if it does become law.

Democrats also raised a concern Thursday that since the legislature is in charge of appointing board members, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate could hypothetically approve only their own picks, and refuse to pass the bills approving the Democrats’ picks.

Newton acknowledged that’s technically true, but he promised that such a blatant act of gamesmanship would be unlikely to happen.

“The legislature’s going to respect this process,” he said, adding that Republicans would let Democrats appoint who they want “99.99 times out of 100.”

Bipartisan views

While much of the opposition to the bill is coming from the left, there’s opposition from both sides on one key part — to strip away the governor’s power to appoint state and county elections board members, and give the legislature that power.

Dallas Woodhouse, the former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, made sure to publicly oppose that provision at Thursday’s meeting. The reason? When the governor makes appointments now, he or she has to work off lists provided by the Democratic and Republican parties. But the legislature did not write any such restrictions for themselves into the new bill.

“Let’s leave the appointment structure as it is,” Woodhouse said. “As a former party official I’m concerned about the weakening of the parties. Let’s let the governor make his appointments, as they always have.”

Woodhouse did, however, throw in a dig at Cooper for a social media post the governor published this week claiming that the prospect for tied votes and inaction at the elections board — combined with a new GOP majority on the state Supreme Court — will help Republican leaders rig future elections.

“That is false,” Woodhouse said. “It is Trumpian. It is disgusting, and he should be rebuked.”