NC Democrats preview bills expanding voter access, push back on GOP voting ‘barriers’
North Carolina Democrats plan to file a slew of bills expanding voting access in the coming weeks, including legislation that would allow the state board of elections to count absentee ballots up to nine days after Election Day.
The announcement comes after legislative Republicans filed the Election Integrity Act last week, which would prevent absentee ballots received after 5 p.m. on Election Day from being counted, and summoned state elections director Karen Brinson Bell before a committee Tuesday and questioned her handling of the 2020 election.
“In the last two weeks, we’ve witnessed two significant developments that roll back our promise of democracy,” said Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Raleigh Democrat, in a news conference Thursday morning.
Chaudhuri said that the elections bill “erects barriers against our citizens’ freedom to vote,” and accused Republicans of pushing “false narratives” about voter confidence in the state’s election system during the hearing Tuesday.
In addition to moving to allow the state to accept absentee ballots nine days after Election Day, Chaudhuri said Democrats will also file legislation that would make online voter registration widely available, address voter intimidation and make Election Day a holiday.
Sen. Mike Woodard, a Durham Democrat, along with Sens. Ben Clark and Sydney Batch, plans to sponsor a bill implementing automatic voter registration, he said. Some 19 states and the District of Columbia already have such a program, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“The results have been exciting,” Woodard said. “Automatic voter registration will keep the voter rolls more accurate by creating a constant stream of updates between registration agencies and election offices.”
Current state law allows absentee ballots to be accepted three days after an election, so long as they are postmarked by Election Day. In the 2020 election, North Carolina’s election board adopted a policy as part of a legal settlement extending that deadline to nine days in response to the pandemic.
The Election Integrity Act Republican lawmakers filed would not allow the collection of absentee ballots any time after Election Day, likely in response to the settlement, The News & Observer reported.
“The goal of the bill is to bring clarity, simplicity and a clear set of rules to ensure everybody’s on the same footing,” Republican Sen. Paul Newton of Mount Pleasant told The N&O, “and the overarching goal is to really restore trust, restore confidence in the election process.”
But Chaudhuri said the legislature “should look to make access to the ballot easier, and not harder. Instead, our Republican friends have doubled down on putting up barriers that take away the voices based on what we look like and where we live. The developments of this week follow a decade-long tradition of disenfranchisement of voters by Republicans.”
Senate Republicans filed a second bill Thursday in response to the elections settlement, requiring that both the House speaker and Senate leader approve a settlement the attorney general enters into if the legislature is a party.
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This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 12:38 PM.
CORRECTION: North Carolina’s election board extended the deadline to collect absentee ballots to nine days in response to the pandemic. An earlier version incorrectly said it was extended 12 days.
