Previously secret documents revealed on NC mail-in voting settlement opposed by GOP
The Republican members of the state elections board who resigned in protest earlier this week gave the public false information, the board’s leader said in an emergency meeting Friday.
He and the other Democrats who remain on the board released documents they claim should prove their version of events.
“Two members of our board resigned their seats, claiming they were misled and did not have all the information,” said Damon Circosta, chair of the N.C. State Board of Elections, adding: “This is not true.”
For example, one of the GOP board members who resigned, Ken Raymond, said he did so because attorneys from the office of Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, had withheld key information from him and the rest of the board. However, one of the formerly confidential documents released Friday shows that that information was actually on the first page of a legal memo Stein’s office sent to board members nearly two weeks ago.
After the elections board waived its attorney-client privilege on those documents Friday to make them public, Stein tweeted that Republican leaders “are lying” about the elections board’s actions “to create mistrust in our elections.”
“That’s disgraceful & un-American,” he continued. “They should care more about helping people stay safe, healthy, & have their vote count than trying to maintain power.”
The controversy surrounds a potential change in the rules for absentee voting. Democrats say it will protect the security of the elections while also making it less likely that people’s mail-in ballots will be thrown out. Republicans, however, say it could open the door for fraud.
Pat Ryan, a spokesperson for Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, read the formerly confidential documents after they came out Friday, which include legal memos and minutes from a closed meeting. He said the minutes show top election officials giving explanations that he called contradictory, at best, to explain their actions.
“The entire thing is confusing, garbled double-speak,” he said.
In a news conference later Friday, Berger said he thinks if the new rules are approved then there will be no guarantee that the election results will be legitimate.
On Thursday, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made similar comments. Although Tillis has previously been supportive of mail-in voting, The News & Observer reported, he said he now is skeptical because of the proposed legal settlement.
In the 2016 elections, a state audit afterward found, there were 508 instances of potentially illegitimate ballots out of 4.8 million. Even if all of those allegations turned out to be true, the audit found, no election results would have been changed. That was due to the small number of votes in question and the fact that the potential illegal votes involved Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and unaffiliated voters.
The changes in question
Earlier this week, the board approved a proposed settlement to a lawsuit that would, among other things, make it easier for people who make mistakes on mail-in ballots to correct those mistakes without having to start over with a brand new ballot.
It has quickly grown into a controversy, even attracting some national attention.
One factor is that so far, mail-in voting for 2020 in North Carolina has been significantly more popular with Democratic voters than with Republicans. So any change to make it harder for the state to throw out people’s ballots is likely to be more helpful to Democratic candidates.
The five-member elections board, consisting of two Republicans and three Democrats, unanimously approved the settlement in question on Tuesday.
But the next day, after top GOP lawmakers criticized the settlement, the board’s two Republican members resigned. In their resignation letters, one, Raymond, claimed lawyers for the state withheld important information. The other, David Black, claimed the settlement did more than he was led to believe it would do.
There had been no evidence to prove whether their claims were true or false, since all of the board’s discussions on the settlement happened behind closed doors. Most elections board meetings are required to be open to the public, but legal discussions are one topic that’s exempt from that rule.
So on Friday, the board’s remaining three members voted to waive their attorney-client privilege on the settlement. That allowed the official minutes of the previously secret settlement discussions and previously confidential memos from the board’s legal staff, and lawyers from Stein’s office, to be released to the public.
Circosta said those minutes show Raymond and Black did not tell the truth about what happened. In reality, Circosta said, the entire board had all the information it needed, and its lawyers were forthcoming about everything.
“Voters deserve to have full confidence in their election process,” he said. “To ensure voters have that confidence, they deserve all of the facts.”
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.
This story was originally published September 25, 2020 at 10:16 AM.
