A Victory for Election Integrity in North Carolina, But Court Battle Looms

With next year’s general election now squarely in focus and former President Donald Trump maintaining a small but steady lead over Joe Biden in hypothetical 2024 matchup polls, election integrity is once again becoming a major issue. As debates over policies like Voter ID and ballot harvesting become more prominent in the months ahead, recent actions by Republicans in the North Carolina state legislature could become a blueprint for other states to follow.

In August, the legislature passed SB 747 and SB 749, both of which deal with election integrity.

SB 747 mandates that election records be retained 22 months after an election takes place and requires mail-in ballots to be received by the time polls close on Election Day.

In 2020, some states accepted mail-in ballots after Election Day, leading to controversy over whether or not those votes should be counted. This bill aims to clear up that confusion and more effectively guard against fraud.

Notably, AMAC Action helped ensure that the provision on mail-in ballots and several other important election integrity measures remained in the bill after some Republicans in Raleigh mounted an effort to remove them.

SB 749 further restores integrity to North Carolina’s electoral process by removing the governor’s ability to pack the state’s electoral board with members of his own party. The bill stipulates that an equal number of Democrats and Republicans must serve on the institution, and also reallocates the governor’s formerly unconstrained power over the state election board to the state legislature.

Unsurprisingly, Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is term-limited, vetoed both bills. In his veto message, Cooper alleged that the bills are “a threat to democracy” and a “legislative takeover of state and local elections boards” that will “doom our state’s elections to gridlock and severely limit early voting.”

But as Republicans in the legislature were quick to point out, it is actually the governor’s unchecked control over the state’s election process that is creating distrust in the electoral system and unfair one-sided control. Despite the fact that Republicans currently hold a 30-20 edge in the Senate and a 72-48 edge in the House, the Democrat Cooper has sole discretion over who controls every elections board in the state.

“Single-party control has led to distrust and skepticism among voters,” Republican state Senator Warren Daniel, a primary sponsor of the bills, said following Cooper’s veto. “Voters should be asking themselves why Gov. Cooper is so desperate to maintain his partisan grip on the State Board of Elections.”

Republicans in the legislature quickly rallied to override Cooper’s veto on October 10, passing the bills into law.

National Democrats unsurprisingly were quick to express their outrage, recognizing that their suspect voting practices in one of the most important swing states are now explicitly illegal. DNC Chair Jaime Harrison called the bills a “brazen attempt to undermine the will of the people and the leadership of Governor Cooper to strip voters of their hard-won voting rights.”

The DNC and the North Carolina Democrat Party also filed a joint lawsuit challenging SB 747, and in particularly its provisions to ensure greater integrity in early and mail-in voting procedures. Democrats are hopeful that a preliminary injunction can keep the bill from taking effect before next year’s election.

The forthcoming court battle could have major implications for the rest of the country as well. Even as Republican candidates look to expand their early and mail-in voting operations, GOP officeholders – and many voters – remain wary of policies like universal mail-in ballots and weeks of early voting due to irregularities during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.

If the North Carolina law remains in place, it would likely clear the way for other Republican-led states to pass similar measures. If a judge strikes down the law, however, it could invite a flood of lawsuits in other states targeted at their election integrity laws.

One way or another, it seems, the courts will play a pivotal role in deciding the future of election integrity in the United States – much as they did in 2020. Americans can only hope that whatever judge hears the case chooses to put the law and the Constitution over partisan ideology.

Neil Banerji is a proud Las Vegas resident and former student at the University of Oxford. In his spare time, he enjoys reading Winston Churchill and Edmund Burke.