North Carolina Republicans are on the verge of pushing through a bill that would give them more power over elections in the state.
The changes were tucked into a bill dealing with Hurricane Helene relief aid at the last minute and passed by the state house of representatives on Tuesday, hours after it was made public.
The bill would strip the governor of the power to appoint members of the state board of elections, charged with overseeing voting in the state, and instead give that power to the state auditor. A Republican won control of the state auditor race this fall for the first time in more than a decade.
It also would give voters less time to request a mail-in ballot and to cure any issues with them once they are cast. North Carolinians currently have more than a week to fix any issues – like providing voter ID or proof of residence. The bill would shorten that period to two and a half days.
“The bill is moving now because the people in control of the legislature don’t like the results of the recent election in North Carolina,” said Liz Barber, policy director of the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s just a shameful power grab.”
The measure is expected to clear the GOP-controlled senate on Wednesday, and would then go to the governor, Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is expected to veto the measure. Republicans currently have a supermajority to override a gubernatorial veto, though it is unclear whether they will be able to in this case.
“Doesn’t get much worse than what happened here yesterday,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, a watchdog group. “A really bad bill rushed to the floor for a vote within an hour of it being posted online for public view. No time for public input or debate.”
Adrianne Spoto, a voting-rights legal fellow at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a civil rights organization, said the bill contained “lots of last-minute changes” that could be “a real barrier for folks getting their votes counted properly”.
Republicans are advancing the bill after losing the gubernatorial election and being poised to lose a supermajority in the state legislature. The move also comes amid a recount in an extremely close state supreme court race; Democrat Allison Riggs narrowly leads Republican Jefferson Griffin by just more than 600 votes. Riggs had trailed by 10,000 votes on election night but overtook Griffin as counties tallied provisional ballots and mail-in ballots that arrived on election day.
The changes in the bill are “100%” a response to the state supreme court race, Phillips said. Had the new law been in place, counties would not have had as much time to count provisional ballots, and voters wouldn’t have had as much time to cure their ballots.
“Had this been the law in place, Allison Riggs does not come out on top in her state supreme court justice seat,” he said.
He said he had also spoken to several election directors who said the condensed timeframe after the election would be impossible to administer and unfeasible to execute.
Even though Democrats have done extremely well in statewide elections in North Carolina recently, Republicans have held on to significant majorities in the state legislature, aided in part by GOP-drawn legislative districts that have given them an electoral advantage. They have spent years trying to exert more control over the state board of elections.
Last year, they enacted a measure that would have transformed the state board from five people to eight and given the state legislature the power to appoint members. It also would have transformed local election boards from being controlled by the governor’s party to evenly split. That measure has been blocked by local courts.
The latest bill would also give Republicans more control over local election boards in the state’s 100 counties. Currently, the state board appoints four members of each local board and the governor picks the chair. The new law would have the auditor-picked state board select local members and then have the auditor pick the local chairs.
The bill would also curb some of the powers of the incoming attorney general, Jeff Jackson, also a Democrat. It prohibits the attorney general from taking any position “that is contrary to or inconsistent with the position of the General Assembly” and prohibits him from participating in any litigation outside the state that could invalidate any North Carolina statute.
In 2016, when Cooper was elected governor, Republicans also used a lame-duck special session to curb his powers.
“You have folks who are upset about an outcome that they probably cannot change. Now they’re going to change the rules to make sure – in their words, although they didn’t say it publicly, but in their words – something like this never happens again,” Phillips said.
