Coronavirus
Expand vote-by-mail for 2020, says a bipartisan group of NC lawmakers
With uncertainty looming over how serious coronavirus will be this fall, a bipartisan push at the state legislature would make it easier for North Carolinians to vote by mail this year.
State officials are expecting a massive increase in people wanting to vote by mail in November. The legislature wants to make sure that goes smoothly, said Rep. Pricey Harrison, who has co-sponsored a new elections bill along with one fellow Democrat and two Republicans.
Usually, Harrison said, fewer than 5% of North Carolina voters choose to vote by mail — but for 2020, “they’re expecting a surge of up to 40%.”
Republican Rep. Holly Grange, the lead sponsor of House Bill 1169, said they wanted to give both state and local elections officials “the flexibility and resources needed to accommodate the expected increase in absentee ballot requests due to the pandemic.”
People who vote by mail now have to find two people to serve as witnesses while they vote. But the bill filed Friday would drop that requirement to just one witness.
Voters are currently not allowed to request absentee ballots by email or fax, but this bill would lift those restrictions.
It would also create a new tracking system, akin to what some retailers or pizza delivery companies have, to let voters ensure that their ballots make it through the mail and to the board of elections. And if there are problems with a ballot, the bill would create a new requirement for the state to notify the voter and let them fix it.
Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the NC Board of Elections, said they worked with lawmakers on the bill and believe it “ensures accessible, safe and secure elections in 2020.”
Would ban universal vote by mail
However, while a few states hold their elections entirely using mail-in ballots, this bill would ban the state elections director from bringing that to North Carolina.
Republican Rep. Destin Hall of Lenoir and Democratic Rep. Allison Dahle of Cary joined Grange, of Wilmington, and Harrison, of Greensboro, in putting the bill forward.
Grange and Hall are the co-chairs of the Elections and Ethics Law Committee in the NC House of Representatives, a sign the bill has high-level support.
Bob Phillips, executive director of the group Common Cause NC, said in a news release Friday that the bill is “a positive step” but could still use some additional provisions.
“We applaud members on both sides of the aisle for this bipartisan effort,” he said. “As the bill makes its way through each legislative chamber, we urge lawmakers to be responsive to suggestions from election experts and the public.”
Harrison said the bill won’t go up for debate in committee until Wednesday morning, but lawmakers wanted to get it filed Friday to give the public time to read it and respond. She said Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted, like pre-paid postage on ballots, but in all she’s happy with the bill.
“It was just real refreshing to have a real bipartisan effort to work on elections laws and protect the voters and the security of the process,” she said.
Some of the bill’s changes match the demands of a lawsuit filed with the support of Democratic activists, which also contained items like pre-paid postage and extended deadlines for mail-in ballots.
While state officials are expecting a budget shortfall due to economic strain from coronavirus, the bill proposes spending several million dollars beefing up the election budget this year.
Some of the money would go toward cyber security improvements, some toward administrative costs to handle a large increase in mail-in ballots, and some toward addressing concerns directly related to coronavirus and public health.
The bill would let people help voters request absentee ballots. The bill also calls for exploring the idea — only in limited cases, including with nursing homes, hospitals or places under quarantine — of allowing people to help voters fill out and send in their completed ballots to be counted. That’s currently allowed under state law but there are questions of how to do so safely during the pandemic.
Such work, if allowed, could only be done by people “working as part of a multipartisan team trained and authorized by the county board of elections.”
Absentee ballot collection was what led to the 2018 voting scandal in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. In that election, Republican Mark Harris initially appeared to have won a seat in Congress against Democrat Dan McCready But a new election was held after allegations emerged that a Harris campaign worker named McCrae Dowless and others were running a pro-Harris absentee ballot fraud scheme.
Harris hasn’t been personally accused of wrongdoing, but multiple people who worked for his campaign are facing criminal charges.
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