Republican senator tells NC elections director ‘you broke the law’ in heated hearing

A North Carolina state senator asked the state Board of Elections director why she shouldn’t have to resign over her handling of last year’s election, and another senator accused her of breaking the law.

“In my heart, you broke the law,” Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, said to elections director Karen Brinson Bell in a heated committee hearing Tuesday afternoon.

The Senate’s redistricting and elections committee brought Bell before its members to question her involvement in a settlement agreement that impacted the rules of the 2020 election.

Last September, the Board of Elections announced that it reached a settlement with plaintiffs in a lawsuit over absentee voting.

The settlement ultimately lengthened the number of days the Board of Elections would accept absentee ballots mailed in by Election Day, on Nov. 3, from Nov. 6 to Nov. 12.

The announcement came as a shock to lawmakers who have sole constitutional authority to write election laws and had already negotiated with the board earlier in 2020 on changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We were totally in the dark and that’s improper,” Rabon said.

Bell told the committee that people voiced concerns about voting in person during a pandemic, but those same people also worried when the U.S. Postal Service put out a statement that agency officials did not know if they could timely deliver ballots.

Bell said the five bipartisan members of the board acted to resolve the lawsuit quickly.

She said the board had concerns that the court would intervene and that the plaintiffs could get court approval for even more rule changes that they were asking for.

“Did it ever occur to you, your board members, the attorney general; anyone you were talking with to ask the governor to call the legislature back?” Rabon asked.

Bell answered that she “didn’t believe that’s what a settlement negotiation was about and that this was the action of the state board.”

Questions in the hearing fell on party lines with Democrats thanking Bell for carrying out an election with the largest voter turnout in state history, and Republicans questioning whether Bell was really bipartisan or played an active role in changing the election’s outcome.

Republican senators asked if she would be willing to provide copies of her tweets from a Twitter account she deactivated in May 2019, before she took the elections board leadership role.

She asked why that was relevant and did not outright decline, but said she needed to do research.

Republican senators asked if Bell worked with “Democratic Party super-lawyer” Marc Elias, Attorney General Josh Stein or Gov. Roy Cooper to usurp legislative authority. Bell denied all of that.

Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth, asked why she agreed to go along with the settlement. Bell said she did not have authority to go against the board.

Rabon shot back that every state employee has the right to tell their supervisor that what they’re asking is illegal and refuse to complete the task.

“I do not believe we broke the law, and the courts have held that we did not break the law,” Bell said.

Rabon said he disagreed. He added that he did not believe any of Bell’s actions were nefarious, but he couldn’t believe she didn’t think to include the legislators.

Sen. Carl Ford, R-Rowan, asked why the committee should not ask for her resignation.

“I am the first of four state election directors to have ever been a county elections director, a chief judge in a precinct and an employee of the state board of elections,” Bell said. “I have 15 years of experience and I’m appointed by the bipartisan state board of elections, and that is who decides my termination or my hire.”

This story was originally published March 23, 2021 at 7:04 PM.