Major changes to North Carolina's elections rules, in 2024 or beyond, were unveiled Thursday in a state Senate committee — including one proposed change that critics say would give the Republican-led legislature the power to change how local city and county governments are elected, in order to weaken Democratic political power in the state's main urban areas and other liberal-leaning parts of the state.
Republican lawmakers in the committee voted to advance a total rewrite of a different bill, Senate Bill 88, that now contains wide-ranging changes to state elections laws.
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One new proposal would crack down on political campaigns and other groups using artificial intelligence to push misleading political ads. It would require the creators of AI-generated ads to disclose that the ad was made using AI, similar to how ads already have to disclose who paid for them.
Failing to disclose the use of AI in a political ad would come with a misdemeanor criminal penalty. But the rules would only apply to misleading ads, "deepfake" images or other negative advertising. And the rules wouldn't apply at all to social media ads — only print, radio and television.
State and national elections officials have increasingly been raising alarms about the potential for bad actors to use AI to spread misinformation and chaos in this year's elections.
The new bill would also require signature-matching for mail-in ballots, starting in 2025.
GOP lawmakers had previously proposed requiring signature-matching rules this year, only to back down in the face of widespread concerns that doing so would lead to thousands of legitimate ballots being thrown out. Many people who register to vote in North Carolina do so at the DMV, where signatures are recorded on electronic pads — which could lead to the state having on file a signature for someone that looks substantially different from their real signature they'd sign on a paper ballot.
There was a 10-county pilot program in place during this year's primary elections in March, to analyze the potential effects of signature-matching rules. The new bill would extend that pilot through the general elections this November and then — regardless of what the pilot program finds — put the rules into effect statewide for all elections in 2025 and beyond.
Supporters of signature-verification rules say it would help ensure no fraud is occurring. Skeptics point out that the state already requires people who vote by mail to verify their identity in multiple ways: They must send in a copy of their ID along with their ballot. They must also have two witnesses, or a certified notary, sign their ballot under penalty of perjury.
Senate Democratic leader Dan Blue, D-Wake, said the signature-matching rules make little sense in the context of everything else the state already does to check voters' identities — as well as the potential problems with the accuracy of the signatures the state has on file — and raise questions like whether notaries or witnesses will be prosecuted over mistakes made by the signature-matching software.
"You're letting a machine, that's unproven, basically say the notary lied," Blue said.
If the change becomes law, North Carolina would become one of only two states in the country to require signature-matching as well as witness signatures for mail-in ballots. Most states use one method or the other; as of this year only Mississippi requires both.
Gerrymandering local government?
A third provision in the bill, Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee said Thursday when the bill was made public, appears to give the state legislature broad powers to change how local city and county government boards are elected.
Such a change would hypothetically allow the Republican-controlled legislature to redraw the local district maps or otherwise skew the political makeup of areas currently under Democratic control.
"This legislature could come into every single local government that has a majority of Democrats — and I'm just going to be frank about that, because that's what this is about — and you could district that local government," said Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe. "You could do everything you could possibly think of, to make it so that Republicans get a majority, or Republicans get some seats.
Mayfield said it's an escalation of a trend she and other Democrats have been raising concerns about for years.
"That is absolutely beyond the pale," she said. "It is one of the more blatant power grabs we have seen."
Sen. Warren Daniel, R-Burke, said Democrats like Mayfield frequently accuse Republicans of gerrymandering because they hold a disproportionately large number of seats in the legislature compared to their share of the vote. However, Daniel said, he sees the exact same thing happening in many local governments — to the benefit of Democrats.
The seven-member Wake County Board of Commissioners, for example, is made up entirely of Democrats. About one in five voters countywide are registered Republicans, and in the 2020 presidential election 36% of Wake County voters backed Republican Donald Trump.
So while Daniel remains a strong proponent of the state legislature being allowed to skew its own maps for political gain, he told Mayfield that Democrats need to figure out if they only support proportional representation when it comes to the legislature, or in local governments too.
Mayfield told him she would absolutely support proportional representation in local government all across the state. But she added that she has no faith that Republican state lawmakers will interfere with local governments that are controlled by Republicans, to give Democrats more seats. This change would only go in one direction, she said.
"I am perfectly happy to look with you at local governments where you might be able to draw the maps differently and get some proportional representation ... but that is not what this body does," Mayfield said. "Consistently, all of these bills are about increasing or ensuring a majority-Republican representation."