North Carolina lawmakers could tighten voting laws again in 2024
One of the state’s top Republicans says lawmakers should make additional changes to North Carolina voting laws before the November 2024 election.
House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, says the session will include “election integrity” legislation. He said the state’s voter ID and early voting laws may need to be tightened up to avoid fraud, and he also told reporters Wednesday he thinks the state’s early voting period is too long.
A number of changes were made to North Carolina’s voting laws in 2023. The biggest change is the requirement to show a driver's license or other approved form of photo ID in order to cast a ballot.
Republican lawmakers first sought to implement voter ID years ago, and it was required for one primary election in 2016. After that, it was blocked by the courts while various state and federal legal challenges to the voter ID law were underway. It was finally implemented by the Republican majority on the state supreme court in 2023.
Now that it’s in effect, Moore says, some of the rules may need to be tightened, particularly those allowing people to vote without a photo ID by signing an affidavit attesting to why they don’t have one.
Moore said he thinks the rules allow too many exceptions.
“I think the affidavit where you can simply attest that you don't have it is silly," he said. "It's pointless. You ought to have an ID to vote. And, I think that we ought to make that abundantly clear.”
North Carolina’s affidavit doesn’t include a simple attestation that the voter lacks photo ID. It requires them to attest to the “reasonable impediment” that has prevented them from obtaining one, like lack of a birth certificate, lack of transportation or religious objection.
However, it also allows “family responsibilities” and “work or school schedules” as reasonable impediments. State law requires county election officials to accept it in lieu of photo ID unless the county board “has grounds to believe the affidavit is false.”
“We want to see how it gets executed,” Moore said.
Senate Leader Phil Berger seemed less inclined to make changes to the photo ID exceptions.
“I think we need to let it run its course and see what sorts of problems there are before we talk about tinkering too much more with it,” Berger, R-Rockingham, said.
“I don’t know that you’re talking about a whole lot of folks, enough folks to make a difference in even a close election," Berger added. “We've got a law in place. Let's see where the problems are, if there are problems in an actual election, as opposed to us speculating as to what might happen.”
Moore also said state lawmakers could consider shortening the state’s early voting period.
North Carolina’s early in-person voting period begins 20 days before the primary and runs for 17 days, concluding the Saturday before the primary.
That’s among the longer periods for early in-person voting nationwide, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but it's by no means the longest.
Moore says it’s still too long.
“There'll be a lot of folks that probably go to vote [Thursday] and Friday," Moore said. "Most counties don't have Saturday voting, some do. And then you'll see in the next week, it'll be like crickets. There'll be hardly be anybody voting.”
Moore said having so many days of early voting costs county elections boards a lot of money and taxes the candidates, including himself, who try to visit polling places to meet voters.
“I would think that one week of early voting should be sufficient," he said. "I mean, I like early voting, I like making it easier to vote, but I think it's just too long.”
House Bill 303, which would limit early voting to nine days, was filed in 2023 by Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, a member of House leadership. It has not yet received a hearing, but could when lawmakers return in late April.
“After the primary, I'm going to be studying it," Moore added. "See where the drop-off is, if you have the surge at the beginning, the surge at the end, and then just kind of nothing going on in the middle.”
WRAL News asked Berger’s staff for his position on reducing the early voting period. They did not immediately respond.
