The rules for voting in NC are being decided in court. We’re tracking the lawsuits.
The 2020 elections in North Carolina are being fought not just in ads and debates, but in the courts, too.
A flurry of lawsuits are challenging numerous pieces of the state’s voting laws — mostly, but not entirely, backed by liberal groups.
From absentee voting rules to photo ID, voter fraud safeguards, felon voting rights and important election deadlines, many important and last-minute changes to the 2020 elections either have just recently happened or could still come down in the next several weeks.
Here are the most high-profile lawsuits The News & Observer has been tracking, broken down by the category of what they’re trying to change.
Voting by mail
There have been numerous lawsuits since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic this spring seeking to make it easier to vote in North Carolina.
Some of them raised issues that the N.C. General Assembly, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan compromise, voted to address earlier this year. That new law made significant parts of those lawsuits basically moot, although a few have continued on.
Many of the changes in the new law will apply only to 2020, however, since they were passed purely due to coronavirus health concerns. Those changes include things like letting people apply for mail-in ballots online, and reducing the number of signatures required for mail-in ballots from two witnesses to just one witness.
Multiple lawsuits tried to eliminate the state’s witness requirement entirely, citing coronavirus health concerns, although so far none have been successful. Other lawsuits are challenging other factors surrounding coronavirus and voting, both by mail and in-person.
▪ Democracy NC v. NC State Board of Elections was unsuccessful in changing the witness requirement and also the state’s voter registration deadline. However, the lawsuit did succeed in one big way: State election officials now have to let people try to fix errors on mail-in ballots that might otherwise lead to the votes not being counted. The challengers in the lawsuit estimated that 100,000 voters might have had their ballots thrown out with no warning this fall, except for this ruling giving them a second chance.
▪ Two other lawsuits are trying to change the rules to make it easier for people to correct their mistakes when they do make them, instead of having to start from scratch with a brand new ballot. State officials have agreed to settle one of those lawsuits, NC Alliance for Retired Americans v. North Carolina, and make the mail-in voting changes in exchange for the challengers dropping other claims. However, GOP lawmakers said they will try to stop that settlement and keep the current rules in place. They and national Republicans, including President Donald Trump’s campaign, sued to block the changes. Another lawsuit on making it easier to fix mistakes on mail-in ballots, filed by the North Carolina Democratic Party and two national Democratic groups, is still pending.
▪ Chambers v. North Carolina was unsuccessful in eliminating the state’s absentee ballot witness requirement.
▪ Stringer v. North Carolina asks that state officials send out mail-in ballots with prepaid postage so voters don’t have to buy stamps to cast a ballot. It makes other requests, too, including a change to the state’s rule that any mail-in ballots received more than three days after Election Day on Nov. 3 won’t be counted even if they’re postmarked on or before Election Day. It’s still pending. However, part of the proposed settlement in the Retired Americans lawsuit mentioned above would have state officials extend that deadline from Nov. 6 to Nov. 12.
▪ A lawsuit related to the 9th Congressional District ballot fraud scandal in 2018 and ensuing changes to state law seeks to undo some of those changes. Advance North Carolina v. NC State Board of Elections claims that the changes Republican lawmakers made here, after the election fraud forced a do-over election, went too far. The new rules ban outside political groups and volunteers from helping people fill out or turn in absentee ballot request forms. State law also now bans practices that critics say led to “ballot harvesting” but that supporters say are legitimate get-out-the-vote efforts. This lawsuit seeks to repeal those new changes and go back to the more permissive rules that used to be in place.
Voting rights, access and fraud
▪ A different lawsuit by the Democratic Party, not related to mail-in voting, asks for individual counties to be able to set their own rules for choosing early voting hours and locations — instead of following the statewide rules passed recently by the Republican-led legislature.
▪ A lawsuit from a conservative group called Judicial Watch claims that Mecklenburg and Guilford counties — home to Charlotte and Greensboro — have done a bad job of keeping accurate lists of registered voters, which could lead to potential voter fraud.
▪ Taliaferro v. NC State Board of Elections claims that North Carolina’s mail-in voting system disenfranchises blind voters — particularly those who also don’t want to vote in person because of underlying health risks for coronavirus. A federal judge ordered the state to give those voters access to an electronic system used for overseas voters.
▪ NC NAACP v. State Board of Elections is trying to force North Carolina counties that still use touchscreen voting machines to switch to entirely paper ballots. Most places don’t use touchscreens but a few do, including Mecklenburg County. The NAACP claims the machines are more susceptible to hackers, and also pose a greater coronavirus risk.
Photo ID rules
Two different lawsuits have resulted in judges at both the state and federal levels saying that North Carolina’s newest voter ID law, from 2018, was likely written with racist intent. Neither case is finished yet, but the judges are stopping the law from going into place while the legal challenges are ongoing.
“North Carolina has a sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression stretching back to the time of slavery, through the era of Jim Crow, and, crucially, continuing up to the present day,” wrote Loretta Biggs, a federal district court judge, in one of the recent rulings against voter ID.
So barring any last-minute reversals in the next few weeks, people won’t have to show ID to vote this year.
▪ In federal court, the lawsuit challenging voter ID is NC NAACP v. Raymond. Republican lawmakers are appealing their initial loss in the case.
▪ In state court, the lawsuit against voter ID is Holmes v. Moore. So far, GOP lawmakers have lost at trial and also at the N.C. Court of Appeals.
▪ A third lawsuit didn’t challenge the details of the voter ID law but did challenge the process by which it — and another new amendment to the state constitution — were passed in 2018. Republican lawmakers lost the case at trial but then won at the N.C. Court of Appeals earlier this month. That case is NC NAACP v. Moore.
The state’s previous voter ID law was also overturned in court, several years ago, for being intended to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Supporters of voter ID say it’s needed to combat voter fraud. There is little evidence of fraud in elections in North Carolina, or anywhere else. And of the fraud that does occur, voter ID would stop almost none of it. In the 2016 elections, North Carolina officials reported in an extensive audit, there was one instance of in-person voter impersonation out of 4.8 million votes cast.
In that case, state officials noticed that a ballot had been cast by a woman who died shortly before the election. They questioned the woman’s daughter, who admitted to impersonating her dead mother to vote for Donald Trump. The local prosecutor, a Republican, decided not to charge her with a crime.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
