NC Republicans pass stricter mail-in voting rules, expand scope of partisan poll observers
North Carolina Republicans passed an extensive elections bill tightening absentee voting rules, empowering poll observers and instituting a variety of what supporters call election integrity measures.
Senate Bill 747’s most notable provisions eliminate the three-day grace period for receiving absentee ballots, ban private money for election administration and give poll observers more freedom to watch the voting process.
The bill passed the House and Senate on Wednesday night along party lines. It now heads to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is expected to veto it. Republicans, however, have enough votes to override his veto in both chambers.
Republicans have argued the changes will increase faith in election security without adding further burdens to voters.
“The one thing this bill does do is it does improve voting in elections for the entire state,” Rep. Grey Mills, an Iredell County Republican, said. “It’s not killing early voting — we’re improving early voting.”
Democrats charged that the bill chips away at voting access and could lead to voter harassment by emboldened poll observers, who would be allowed to hear conversations between voters and election officials.
“What we’re going to do is we’re going to reduce the franchise inch by inch until we look just like some of these other countries that we all ran from so we could have better lives,” House Democratic Leader Robert Reives said.
Rep. Pricey Harrison said Democrats had just received a fiscal analysis of the bill on Wednesday, which said it would cost $6 million. No money is appropriated in the bill and a state budget has yet to be passed with any election funding.
Democrats attempted to pass over a dozen amendments to the bill, ranging from gutting entire sections of the legislation to allocating money to the State Board of Elections to ensure certain provisions of the bill could be paid for.
Republicans accepted a single Democratic amendment from Rep. Alison Dahle. The amendment created a carve-out in the section banning private money in election administration to allow the in-kind donation of buildings for voting, as well as food and pens for election workers.
SB 747 was first passed in June, but lay dormant for several months in House committees before reappearing in an amended version this week. House Republicans made changes to the original bill that removed or softened certain controversial provisions, but left in place most of the main sections.
A proposal to institute two-factor authentication for absentee ballots was removed after critics questioned how this could practically be implemented. House members also limited a signature matching requirement to a pilot program only, with the understanding that it could be legislated to become permanent depending on the results of the pilot.
The original bill would also have required all voters using same-day registration to cast a provisional ballot. This was replaced with language requiring a retrievable ballot instead, which would allow election officials to find and nullify a ballot if they were unable to verify the voter’s address after they registered.
Another major elections bill, which would drastically restructure state and local election boards, remains to be taken up by the House. Senate Bill 749 would create an even bipartisan split among these boards and have members appointed by the legislature, rather than the governor. It passed the Senate in June but so far has not moved in the House.
