NC same-day voter registration lawsuit hits impasse

With North Carolina's primary elections just two months away, the fate of the state's new law governing same-day registration is back in the hands of a federal judge after the parties involved failed to reach a compromise this week.

Several federal lawsuits have been filed against election law changes made last year by Republican lawmakers, including an earlier deadline for accepting mail-in ballots, tighter rules for same-day registrations and looser rules for partisan poll observers.

The plaintiffs include the state Democratic party and an assortment of voting-rights groups, while the defendants include state and local voting officials, who administer elections, and Republican legislative leaders backed by the Republican National Committee.

Two challenges to a change to the same-day registration law were heard together on Dec. 28 by federal District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder.

Under the old law, a voter using same-day registration would submit a retrievable ballot. In the following days, their registration information would be validated, and they would receive a postcard from the board of elections to verify their mailing address. If the first postcard was returned undeliverable, a second postcard would be sent as a back-up. But if that second postcard wasn't also returned before election day, election officials would still count the ballot.

Republican lawmakers called that a loophole that allowed too much room for voter fraud, although there's no evidence that that's happened on any detectable scale.

Under the new law, voters using same-day registration would have all the same requirements, but would receive only one postcard to verify their address. If that one postcard bounces back, their ballot would be thrown out, even if the cause was a postal error, not a fraudulent registration.

The new law doesn't provide a way to notify the voter that their ballot will be thrown out, or allow them to "cure" the issue by submitting additional proof of their address. Plaintiffs say that will result in valid votes being thrown out.

Voters who use same-day registration are disproportionately likely to be young, including college students, or low-income. Those voters tend to vote for Democrats in North Carolina.

"It's a fixable problem," Schroeder said at the Dec. 28 hearing. "The question is who fixes it."

Schroeder ordered parties to the two lawsuits to try to reach a compromise. Late Jan. 4, the parties filed a report saying they had failed to come to an agreement.

The matter now lies in Schroeder's hands.

Attorneys for the parties involved in the discussions did not immediately respond to WRAL's request for comment.