Waiting for election results ‘breeds suspicious theories,’ NC lawmaker says

After stopping several members of the public from speaking about a controversial elections bill up for debate in a legislative committee Wednesday, Republican state lawmakers advanced the bill over Democrats’ objections.

The bill would change how mail-in voting works in future elections. Right now, any mail-in ballot that is postmarked by Election Day is counted as long as state officials receive it within three days of the election. That three-day grace period theoretically allows people who vote by mail to wait until Election Day to finalize their decisions, just like people who vote in person.

Republicans want to change that, citing concerns over the integrity of elections.

Senate Bill 326 would stop state officials from counting any mail-in ballots that come in after Election Day — even if they were mailed on time.

“Every day that passes after the election with uncertainty just causes distrust in the process,” Republican Sen. Warren Daniel of Morganton said. “Every day without a clear winner breeds suspicious theories in people’s minds, and that’s not healthy for the elections process.”

Democrats say the bill would actually undermine the integrity of elections by harming voters of both parties.

“This bill will result in many ballots — valid ballots from registered voters — being thrown away because they arrive after Election Day,” Sen. Natasha Marcus of Charlotte said. “And that’s the opposite of election integrity. It’s going to be bipartisan disenfranchisement because it’s going to be your voters, my voters, everywhere in the state.”

Republicans’ proposal, to stop accepting mail-in ballots at 5 p.m. on Election Day, would not apply to voters in the military or living overseas but would apply to everyone else.

The bill does not go as far as some other GOP-led states have gone on clamping down on mail-in voting. Some states already require voters to have a specific excuse if they want to vote by mail, and some are proposing the change now. North Carolina allows anyone who wants to vote by mail to do so, and this bill would not change that.

Around the country, many of these “election integrity” bills have been proposed after former Republican President Donald Trump spread numerous false conspiracy theories about mail-in voting being fraudulent in 2020. He also falsely declared himself the winner after midnight on election night, under the pretense that whoever is ahead on election night should win even if not all the votes have been counted.

He did not win, although he and his supporters have continued claiming he was the victim of various schemes to rig the election. Many attendees at last weekend’s NCGOP annual convention wore hats or brought signs that said the election was stolen or rigged, and when Trump spoke at the convention he repeated the same ideas.

Many states with Republican-majority legislatures have made changes to election rules after Trump’s loss. The push has been particularly intense in Republican-led states that Trump lost, like Georgia and Arizona.

In the 2020 elections North Carolina was among the last states to finish counting votes, due to a controversial lawsuit settlement that temporarily let state officials accept ballots for nine days after the election instead of three. That irked Republicans even though Trump won the state, defeating Biden by 1.3% of the vote here.

An extra 2,197 votes were counted during the extended period last year, The News & Observer previously reported. That was just 0.04% of the total and could not have affected the outcome of most races — although it’s possible they could have swung the race for Supreme Court chief justice, where Republican Paul Newby defeated Democrat Cheri Beasley by about 400 votes.

Daniel said the rules allowing for late-arriving ballots to be counted “caused North Carolina’s call of the election to drag on needlessly for days” and that it should not be allowed again.

Activists silenced

A large crowd came to the committee Wednesday for the bill, many of them liberal activists. But some who signed up to speak weren’t allowed to, after the committee’s time ran out.

The bill had originally been first on the day’s three-item agenda but was pushed to last — something Danielle Brown of the group Black Voters Matter said was done to run out the clock, after the committee’s Republican leaders saw how many people came to speak.

A few people did get the chance to speak, but others did not. So many came to the meeting that the entire crowd couldn’t fit inside the room and some had to wait in the hallway.

“Disenfranchisement, it starts right here in this building, point blank, period,” Brown said after the meeting. “You did not allow us to speak. ... You actually, on purpose, stalled it out so that we would not be able to speak.”

Manny Diaz said he drove two hours from Fayetteville to speak at Wednesday’s 11 a.m. meeting. An organizer with the voting rights group Democracy North Carolina, Diaz was one of those who signed up to speak but didn’t get the chance to.

Afterward he said if he could have addressed the committee, he would have told them that the democratic process is fundamental to American society and shouldn’t be meddled with.

“The sole purpose of this bill is to begin the dismantling of the absentee voting process in North Carolina,” Diaz said. “Politicians across our country are seeking to make voting as inaccessible and as inconvenient as possible. It appears that sentiment has reached our state.”

The bill could soon have a vote by the full Senate, after a stop in another committee.

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