Republicans support mail-in voting while calling into question integrity of NC elections

The Republican National Committee is saying they will play by the election rules of Democrats this season by embracing early voting, mail-in voting and ballot harvesting where legal.

“Where states have the universal mail-in voting, we are going to run a universal mail-in voting program,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley, who previously served as North Carolina’s GOP chairman, said on Fox News.

This stance is a shift from Donald Trump’s rhetoric during and after the 2020 presidential election when he expressed intense distrust over mail-in ballots.

"With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump tweeted on July 30, 2020.

In North Carolina, absentee and mail-in ballots are one in the same, and anyone can request one with no excuse, and it’s gotten more popular over the years. In the 2008 general election, only 5% of voters cast a mail-in ballot whereas in 2020, about 18% used that method.

The NC GOP party said in an email statement that “The NCGOP believes in meeting voters where they are and is fully supportive of the RNC's historic effort this year in all forms of absentee and early voting.”

Despite this, Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, said he believes voting by mail, except when absolutely necessary, is not secure due to the postal service and lack of oversight from the board of elections.

“I’m a huge Trump fan,” Womack said. “I’m a huge American first conservative, but when it comes to absentee by mail, it's the devil’s playground.”

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Jason Roberts, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and member with Orange County elections, said the shift actually reverts to pre-Trump times.

“I would call it a shift back,” Roberts said. “If you step back, Republicans were better at this to start with. They pioneered this idea of vote by mail, especially with states like Florida to get their votes in early, and then Trump comes along and decides this is a bad idea."

Part of Whatley’s message also referenced ballot harvesting, saying where it is legal they will be partaking. Ballot harvesting is when a third-party person or organization returns a ballot on behalf of a voter. In North Carolina, the only people who can return a ballot are the voter or a direct family member; however, laws differ state-by-state.

RNC’s ‘Protect the Vote’

While the RNC is encouraging mail-in voting, they are simultaneously stressing that elections need to be further secured and are calling into question the integrity of the North Carolina election process.

On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee, North Carolina GOP and National Republican Congressional Committee called into question the North Carolina Board of Elections guidance on mail-in ballots and voter IDs.

The RNC said they submitted a request to the administrators of the North Carolina Board of Elections asking for changes to a memo updated in January about how election officials should determine if a mail-in ballot is valid, among other concerns.

It is not a legal action at this time.

Jason Simmons, chairman of the North Carolina GOP, also called out Karen Brinson Bell, executive director at the state board of elections.

“NCSBE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell has repeatedly abused her authority to sidestep legislation passed by the General Assembly,” Simmons wrote in the Tuesday press release. “She is manipulating the elections process and undermining common sense election integrity measures in order to fulfill a partisan narrative.”

The board of elections memo in question was adopted “upon the agreement of the full State Board of Elections,” Patrick Gannon, public information officer for the board of elections, said via email. The board of elections has 30 days since the submission to deny or grant the request.

Besides Tuesday’s announcement, the RNC has also launched ‘protect the vote,’ an election integrity program focusing on battleground states, like North Carolina.

The plan is to have "over 100,000 dedicated volunteers and attorneys deployed across every battleground state as part of the RNC’s commitment to ensuring transparency and fairness in the 2024 elections,” according to an NC GOP press release.

Their plan includes recruiting volunteer poll watchers and workers to watch for “irregularity.”

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Brinson Bell said she has seen a shift, from all parties, about the purpose of poll watchers in recent years.

“It certainly has moved into the environment to be more of a watchdog on how the processes are going,” Brinson Bell said.

She added that the best way to combat fear around election security is to become a poll worker.

“If anyone questions how elections are being carried out, and how to ensure that they're being carried out properly, the best thing that anyone can do is not to spend energy and resources on recruiting people to be observers, it's to recruit them to be poll workers and voting site officials,” Brinson Bell said.

Poll watchers are deployed by parties and are allowed in the electioneering space outside of the actual polling area. They can watch, but do not help voters. In comparison, poll workers have been trained by the board of elections and are inside the polling place helping voters with the voting process, ballots and the tabulators.

Despite concern from voters and about the safety and integrity of elections, Roberts said overall, the system is working very well.

“Voting is incredibly secure no matter what method we use,” Roberts said. “The instances of fraud of any kind we see every year are incredibly minimal.”

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: RNC supports mail-in voting amid election integrity concerns in NC