‘These conspiracy theories’: Why a 27-city tour wants to build trust in 2024 NC elections
Editor’s note: This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
The fears are similar at each stop: a refusal to certify ballots, noncitizens voting and miscounted ballots by poll workers.
But most of those concerns are rumors that can be dispelled with evidence, said Jennifer Roberts, the former Charlotte mayor who’s helping lead election education efforts across North Carolina.
The Trusted Elections Tour, first launched in 2022, is a 27-city tour hosted by The North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe, and Secure Elections and The Commission on the Future of NC Elections meant to dispel voters’ fears about election integrity. The tour educates voters on what has been proven by the group’s research as well as other state experts – the North Carolina election system is safe and secure.
“We are concerned about not just Election Day, but between Election Day and inauguration, very concerned about rumors and attempts to change results or to say they’re not valid,” Roberts said. “So that’s why we’re working so hard to get people to understand ahead of time that ‘here’s how the system works.’”
Partisan divide
The mistrust stems from former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, Roberts said, and his repeated comments that the election was rigged against him — rhetoric that led to the Jan. 6 capitol riots. The claims stand in contrast to officials who worked for Trump. Former Attorney General William Barr, who served under Trump, said shortly after the election in 2020 he hadn’t seen “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
Trump once again repeated the claims that elections are unfair this month in Charlotte while addressing a room full of law enforcement officers.
“If we can keep the cheating down to a minimum, because these people cheat, they cheat like hell, if we can keep it down to a minimum, we win easily,” Trump said during the university-area event.
A May poll from Elon University reported 38% of voters said they were not at all confident or not too confident this year’s election will be accurate. The poll showed a partisan divide, with most Republicans lacking confidence and the majority of Democrats expressing confidence.
The key to boosting confidence, according to North Carolina Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, is a State Board of Elections with a better balance of Republicans and Democrats.
“It’s no surprise that North Carolinians question the fairness of the election process. Gov. (Roy) Cooper has handpicked partisan Democrats for that board; their actions ignore reasonable compromise,” Berger said in an email to The Charlotte Observer. “Neither political party should control the election process. In order to increase trust and confidence in our elections, we must have balanced representation on the Board.”
Members of the state board are appointed by the governor based on a list of nominees from both parties. State law prohibits more than three members of the same political party from serving on the board. Currently, three Democrats and two Republicans serve on the board. The board’s director, Karen Brinson Bell, is a Democrat.
Improving trust
In addition to the tours, The Commission on the Future of NC Elections is studying bipartisan solutions to election mistrust and fairness concerns. The commission will release its findings along with proposed election reforms early next year.
Some potential reforms include ranked-choice voting, increasing accessibility to polls for people with disabilities, more funding toward poll worker safety and making voter IDs more attainable, Roberts said.
Gary Brown, who has been a poll worker in Surrey County at the Virginia border for 48 years, is part of a bipartisan team that tests machines in the county, delivers voting materials and picks them up to bring back to the board of elections office. Brown, a Republican, said the elections are “absolutely” secure in the state.
“Part of the problem is you have these conspiracy theories,” he said. “They’re welcome to have their opinion, but the problem is a lot of it is rumor, hearsay, word of mouth and they don’t take the time to really check into it and see what’s going on.”
Brown, who attended a stop with his friend, a Democratic poll worker, said he hopes people learn about the election process so they can be confident when voting.
“I’m proud of the process. I am. And I take pride in the fact that, especially our office over there, they do what they’re supposed to do by the book and they try to make sure that the process is done like it’s supposed to be done,” he said. “I work so hard to be neutral and make sure that when they come in there… they’re able to have confidence that whatever they decide to do, they accomplish that.”
The Trusted Elections Tour has around a dozen more stops throughout North Carolina this year including a virtual town hall on Oct. 15.
This story was originally published September 16, 2024 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘These conspiracy theories’: Why a 27-city tour wants to build trust in 2024 NC elections."
