North Carolina lawmakers are considering not only a series of new voting restrictions, but also a major overhaul of state and county boards of elections, alarming advocates who say some of the proposals could stall the Democratic apparatus of the state. state.
The changes would restrict same-day registration and voting by mail. They would also give new powers to the state Legislature, where Republican lawmakers have been emboldened by a new veto-proof majority, along with a new republican most in the state Supreme Court.
The three bills, which could be considered in House committee hearings this week, come as North Carolina begins to institute new voter ID rules. The state Supreme Court had previously declared photo identification requirements unconstitutional, but the new Republican majority reversed that decision earlier this year, allowing the law to be enacted.
Critics, including voting rights advocates and Democrats, said the bills’ provisions would threaten the democratic process and suppress voting. The Republican sponsors of the bills did not respond to requests for comment.
“It is undermining democracy, period. Plain and simple,” Democratic state Rep. Allison Dahle, vice chair of the House committee she will soon consider the Senate bills, told NBC News.
Christopher Cooper, professor and director of the Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University, said the new election bills would add more uncertainty to a system already facing big changes.
“There is a lot up in the air about what the Board of Elections will look like, how voter ID will be implemented, when our mail-in ballots will be allowed to be accepted,” he said. “Anyone who says they can tell you what the 2024 North Carolina election will look like is lying.”
Reform of the electoral board
Senate Bill 749 would reform state and local election boards, the five-person bodies that oversee democratic operations and certify election results.
North Carolina county boards of elections are tasked with conducting elections: registering voters, operating polling places, and counting ballots, while the state board appoints people to county boards. and oversees their work, while also handling campaign finance disclosures and law enforcement.
Currently, the state and county boards include three members from the governor’s party and two members from the other party. Nominations are made by parties, while appointments are made by the governor.
The bill, which passed the Senate in June, would strip the governor of a role in the process. Instead, he would create an eight-person State Board of Elections, split evenly between the two parties and appointed by party leaders in the state Legislature. County boards would be reduced to four members, also split evenly along party lines and appointed by lawmakers.
The new boards are designed to restore confidence in elections by eliminating partisan advantage, the bill’s proponents say, but experts warn they could lead to a nightmare scenario: deadlocked boards tasked with completing the most critical tasks in the electoral administration. The bill identifies some scenarios in which the Legislature could step in to resolve a deadlock, such as the appointment of an electoral board chairperson, but offers no alternatives to deadlocks on key tasks like certifying election results. elections.
Sending it to the Legislature would also, for now, benefit Republicans, who hold a majority in both chambers, something they are likely to preserve thanks to aggressive and effective statewide rigging.
Meanwhile, the current Democratic governor would be left out of the process of making appointments and thus controlling the balance of power on the boards.
“How do they do something? Are important decisions going to stall? The consequences of that, as we are learning, could be devastating,” said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina.
Under current law, early voting locations and times must be approved with the unanimous support of a county board of elections, Phillips said. If a county board member objects, the state board must decide. If you can’t, she said, current law says the only early voting site would be the county board of elections office.
Such a decision could have a devastating impact on turnout in large counties that might typically have more than a dozen early voting locations, he said, and leave voters in more rural and less populated counties forced to travel.
This is at least the fourth time state Republicans have tried to secure power over the State Board of Elections in North Carolina since Democrat Roy Cooper won the governor’s mansion in 2016. Two Attempts to modify the electoral board were declared unconstitutional, while a third attempt, a constitutional amendment in 2018, failed at the ballot box.
John Hood, a board member of the conservative John Locke Foundation, said he believes this latest bill is also unconstitutional.
“They assume that the North Georgia Supreme Court would not rule in the same way that previous courts have ruled on this issue, but I don’t think they should make that assumption,” he told NBC News.
At a news conference announcing SB 747 and SB 749, Acting Senate Chairman Phil Berger, a Republican whose district includes Rockingham and parts of Guilford, said he believed previous decisions on Supreme Court election boards from the state may have been taken incorrectly, pointing to dissent over past sentences. The 2018 dissents were written by Republican justices, who recently won a majority of the court.
Majority Leader’s Son Phil Berger Jr.. he is one of the republican judges on the court.
poll watchers
House Bill 772 allows poll watchers to “roam freely” at polling places, standing up to 5 feet from voters and poll workers, and listening and recording many activities inside the polls. voting site.
The bill signs into law a number of new powers for poll watchers: They can listen in on conversations at the polling place, including those that identify voters and their addresses. They may take videos or photos of the tabulating equipment at the start and end of voting, and use their cell phones to take notes and communicate, as long as they do not receive calls inside the polling place during voting hours.
‘Two Factor Authentication’ and more
Senate Bill 747, which also passed the Senate last month, adds a number of new voting restrictions, including provisions that:
- Require absentee ballots to reach election officials before Election Day, eliminating a three-day grace period the state had previously allowed for postmarked ballots.
- Require people who want to register to vote and cast ballots on Election Day to have multiple forms of identification, such as a driver’s license and a utility bill, with the exact same address, or to prove their identity to officials elections later.
- Prohibit election officials from accepting outside money or in-kind donations.
- Direct the state board of elections to devise and implement “two-factor authentication” for absentee ballots.
Democrats say the bill includes provisions that would suppress voting, while others are ill-conceived proposals designed to appease grassroots voters who believe former President Donald Trump’s stolen election lie.
For example, two-factor authentication is “absurd,” said state Sen. Natasha Marcus, a Democrat who opposed the legislation.
“We literally ask them over and over again: What does that mean? That doesn’t make any sense, they should take that out of this bill,” she said in an interview. “They couldn’t explain it, but they wouldn’t get it out either.”
