NC Republicans enact voting, election boards changes over Democratic Gov. Cooper's vetoes

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Republicans enacted vote-count restrictions and weakened the governor's ability to oversee elections and other state regulatory bodies on Tuesday by overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes. With the 2024 elections approaching, the first of what could be many lawsuits challenging the new laws was immediately filed.

In a series of votes, the narrow GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate overturned five Cooper vetoes, two of which address elections and voting in the ninth-largest state — a likely presidential battleground where statewide races usually are very close.

One law would eliminate the governor's power to appoint the State Board of Elections and give it to legislative leaders, while the other would end a three-day grace period to receive and count absentee ballots as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.

These laws — years in the making after Cooper's vetoes or lawsuits blocked legislation with similar provisions — advanced this year thanks to Republican seat gains in the 2022 elections and an April party switch by a House Democrat to the Republican Party.

The electoral changes are among a wave of GOP election laws and administrative overhauls that have occurred while former President Donald Trump, who seeks a return to the White House, has repeatedly made false claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud.

While Trump won North Carolina's electoral votes in both 2016 and 2020, Democrats see the state as a pickup opportunity for President Joe Biden in 2024.

North Carolina GOP legislators advancing the bills have not focused on Trump’s grievances, but rather arguments that the legislation will promote bipartisan consensus in election administration.

“We must take common-sense steps to ensure that our elections are fair and free from perceived bias,” GOP Sen. Warren Daniel, a chief sponsor of the elections bills, said during Tuesday's debate.

But Cooper and his allies contend the election and voting legislation will give Republicans the upper hand in close results, intimidate voters and make it more difficult to cast ballots.

“This decision will have a lasting and detrimental effect on local and statewide elections," Joselle Torres with Democracy North Carolina said at a Legislative Building rally just before Tuesday's votes. “Attacks on mail-in ballots are attacks on those who rely most on this voting method -- people with disabilities, the elderly and millions of rural voters."

The state elections board has five members, with the governor’s party historically holding three of the seats. Beginning Jan. 1, the board will be eight members, chosen by legislative leaders from both major parties and likely creating a 4-4 split among Democrats and Republicans.

“Our current board structure allows the party of the governor, whichever party that is... to manipulate the system," Senate Majority Leader Paul Newton said.

Critics say these changes will lead to board impasses that will scale back the number of local early in-person voting sites and could send the outcomes of contested elections to the courts or the General Assembly to settle.

“This bill does the opposite of what it says it will do — it will actually make the administration of elections more partisan, not less partisan,” said Rep. Allen Buansi, a Democrat.

The law says the new state board also would have until early January to decide whether to keep current state elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell on the job or hire someone else. If the board can’t decide, the decision would fall to Republican Senate leader Phil Berger.

Republicans were unhappy with Brinson Bell — hired by the Democratic-majority board in 2019 — for her role in a legal settlement that extended in 2020 the time for mailed-in ballot envelopes postmarked by the election date to be received and counted from three days after the election to nine days.

An omnibus voting law also enacted Tuesday in part would eliminate the three-day window and instead require mailed-in ballots be received by the time in-person balloting ends at 7:30 p.m. on the date of the election in order to count.

Republicans say that voters will be educated on the new deadline, which is similar to those in more than half of the states. The deadline wouldn’t apply to military or overseas ballots.

The omnibus measure also prohibits officials from accepting private money to administer elections and directs state courts to inform elections officials about potential jurors being disqualified because they aren’t U.S. citizens, so they can then be removed from voter rolls.

It also toughens the rules by which someone who both registers to vote and cast a ballot during the state’s 17-day early in-person voting period can have their choices count. It's this new provision that led election advocacy groups and college students — assisted by high-powered lawyers that often back Democratic interests — to sue in federal court on Tuesday afternoon.

They allege the same-day registration changes violate the constitutional rights of new voters by automatically disenfranchising them should an address verification notice mailed to them be undeliverable through the fault of the U.S. Postal Service.

House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters that legislation approved Tuesday “is the correct public policy (and) that it’s on solid legal ground.”

“We expect litigation with so many things that we do, it’s just the nature of where we are right now,” he added.

Another new law with Tuesday’s successful override scales back or eliminates authority from Cooper and future governors to appoint members to several other boards and commissions. And an energy bill designed to encourage nuclear energy production and the legislature’s annual “regulatory reform” measure also is now law.

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Associated Press/Report for America writer Hannah Schoenbaum contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Narrow GOP supermajorities in NC General Assembly overturn five vetoes