After meeting with ex-Trump lawyer, GOP pitches new NC voting rules vetoed by Cooper
After consulting with a lawyer who was instrumental in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, GOP leaders have introduced a bill to implement stricter election rules.
The bill would shorten the deadline for receiving absentee ballots, make voters who do same-day registration cast a provisional ballot and prohibit private money in election administration.
Prior to introducing the bill, GOP lawmakers including Sen. Ralph Hise, chair of the Redistricting and Elections Committee, met with Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer best known for participating in the phone call in which former President Donald Trump asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” the votes he needed to win the state.
What’s in the bill
Lawmakers released the bill, entitled Election Law Changes, Thursday afternoon.
The 16-page legislation would institute the following changes:
▪ All absentee ballots would have to be received by 7:30 p.m. on the day of an election to be counted. (Currently, they can be received three days later if they are postmarked by the election date.)
▪ Anyone who does same-day registration to vote would have to cast a provisional ballot.
▪ All county boards of election would need to report several data points every day of early voting, including the number of spoiled absentee ballots and the number of outstanding absentee ballots.
▪ The State Board of Elections and all county boards would not have the authority to accept private money for elections administration.
▪ Anyone who reports that they are not qualified to be a juror because they are not a citizen would be removed from the voter rolls.
Hise is one of the bill’s sponsors, along with Sens. Paul Newton and Warren Daniel, who also chairs the elections committee.
The bill would become effective once passed, meaning it would apply to this fall’s upcoming municipal elections if passed this session.
Mitchell and EIN’s reach
Hise told reporters that Mitchell did not review the content of the bill, but did relay her concerns with election administration to lawmakers.
WRAL first reported Mitchell’s input on Wednesday.
Senate leader Phil Berger stressed that Mitchell did not have any role in drafting the bill.
“Ms. Mitchell or anyone else has not written the bill, has not markedly — or to any appreciable extent that I know of — changed what the members were intending to do,” Berger told reporters.
Mitchell leads the Election Integrity Network. Jim Womack, who leads the group’s North Carolina chapter, confirmed that he and his team met with the co-chairs of the Senate elections committee to discuss their concerns with state election law.
Womack said legislators did not show him or his team any drafts of an elections omnibus bill nor did they promise to address any of the concerns EIN brought up.
“They didn’t commit to any one of those provisions,” Womack said in an interview with The News & Observer. “They were just receiving input like they do from all other groups.”
EIN and Mitchell have done extensive work in other states to lobby for stricter election rules.
A subsidiary of EIN called Florida Fair Election lobbied against a provision that would have made it a felony to harass election workers in that state, CNN reported. Several weeks after their lobbying, the legislature removed that section from the bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed this past week.
Lawmakers speak out
Following the bill’s filing in North Carolina, Senate Republicans lauded it in a press release.
“Making Election Day the official deadline removes confusion and skepticism from the minds of voters. It will make for a quicker declaration of winners, it aligns us with 30 other states, and it helps North Carolina move past each election cycle with confidence, instead of doubt,” Newton said in a press release.
Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue and House Democratic Leader Robert Reives issued a joint statement condemning the legislation.
“A Republican bill meant to restore the integrity of our elections is a red herring,” the statement said. “Republicans have lost credibility in promoting election security — especially when they have been conspiring with election deniers direct from Trump’s camp behind closed doors.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper also criticized the bill on Twitter.
“And here they go with advice from election deniers and fraud perpetrators,” the Tweet read. “Don’t be fooled. This isn’t about protecting elections. It’s about rigging them to help Republicans.”
Prior to filing the bill, Hise said the legislation would target several technical issues in election administration.
“We have some technical glitches that we will be able to improve,” he said. “We have some data collection, data sharing issues that we think are important.”
Berger also refused to give details on the bill’s contents earlier on Thursday.
“What you’ll see is a lot of the stuff that’s in there is stuff that we passed before that got vetoed,” Berger said.
In April, the House advanced a bill that would have shortened the deadline by which absentee ballots can be received — but it never made it to a floor vote.
