‘Assault on the right to vote.’ Cooper to veto slate of GOP-backed election changes
Gov. Roy Cooper announced on Thursday he will veto a slate of Republican-backed election changes, calling the bill an “all-out assault on the right to vote.”
The bill in question, Senate Bill 747, would eliminate the three-day grace period for receiving absentee ballots, give partisan poll observers more power to watch voting and ban the use of private money for election administration.
In a video message, Cooper said these changes aim to disenfranchise young and nonwhite voters who are more likely to support Democrats.
“This attack has nothing to do with election security and everything to do with keeping and gaining power,” he said.
Republicans argue the bill would increase faith in elections without infringing on the right to vote.
“When North Carolina voters vote, democracy wins,” Sen. Warren Daniel, a Burke Republican, said in a statement on Thursday. “That’s why we are creating a secure election system that makes it easy to vote and protects election integrity.”
The governor said he would veto the legislation on Thursday. An override is near-certain, though, as Republicans passed the bill with a veto-proof supermajority.
“By overriding this veto, we’ll guarantee every citizen’s right to vote with confidence in the security of our elections,” Daniel’s statement said.
Senate Bill 747
The bill passed on party lines over fierce opposition from Democrats, who attempted to add more than a dozen amendments to the bill in the House. Only one, a change that allowed for in-kind donations of voting sites, food, or office supplies proposed by Rep. Allison Dahle, was approved.
Cooper also noted that top Republicans consulted with Cleta Mitchell before proposing the bill. A former lawyer to President Donald Trump and now an activist focused on changes she says will promote election integrity, Mitchell was on the call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win the state.
Earlier this month, Trump was charged with unlawfully soliciting Raffensperger to violate his oath of office.
Cooper also took issue with the expanded freedom of partisan poll observers in the bill.
“They also want to intimidate you by stacking the polling place with Republican poll observers who will be watching you vote and can hear your conversations with election officials,” he said. “Many of them will be election-denying conspiracy believers trying to disrupt the process and prevent certain people from voting.”
SB 747 gives each party the opportunity to appoint an equal number of poll observers.
Not the only election bill in the works
Cooper also announced his intention to veto another election bill, Senate Bill 749, that has not yet passed the legislature.
This bill would require all state and local election boards to have an even bipartisan split and have members be appointed by the legislature, rather than the governor.
In a press release, the governor’s office said this bill would end up “creating potential gridlock and leading to the supermajority Republican legislature and partisan courts deciding contested elections.”
SB 749 does not establish a process for deciding a tie vote in most circumstances, but Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters in June he suspected the decision would go to a superior court.
Cooper said deadlocks on local boards could reduce the number of early voting sites, since counties revert to only one site if the board cannot agree on an early voting plan.
This story was originally published August 24, 2023 at 10:58 AM.
