NC Republicans file bill to reduce early voting period ahead of November midterms
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- North Carolina Republicans filed SB 1084 to cut early voting from 17 days to 10.
- If passed this session, SB 1084 would apply to the upcoming November midterm elections.
- Democrats said the bill was an attempt to make it harder to vote.
North Carolina Republicans on Monday filed a bill to reduce the state’s early voting period from 17 days to 10.
If passed this session, the bill, Senate Bill 1084, would apply to the upcoming midterm elections in November.
Legislative leaders have not yet given the bill a committee hearing, but Senate leader Phil Berger has recently expressed interest in cutting the early voting period for primary elections, which have much lower turnout.
“I don’t know (about) in the general election — where you have a lot more people showing up — but certainly in the primary, 17 days of early voting just seemed pretty excessive, and it really stresses the local boards of elections,” he told reporters last month.
SB 1084, however, would cut the early voting period for all elections — not just the primary. Berger himself is not listed as a sponsor on the bill, but it is sponsored by Sen. Warren Daniel of Morganton, who chairs the Senate Elections Committee.
House Speaker Destin Hall has also expressed support for reducing the early voting period for primary elections.
At a press conference hosted by Black lawmakers on Tuesday, Sen. Natalie Murdock, a Durham Democrat, said the bill was part of a larger pattern of Republicans enacting obstacles to voting.
“It is clear that if they don’t think folks are going to vote for them, they want to make it more difficult for them to vote,” she said.
In recent years, the legislature has instituted a voter ID requirement, eliminated the three-day grace period for receiving absentee ballots, cut the timeline for approving provisional ballots and transferred control of all state and local election boards to the Republican state auditor, Dave Boliek.
Last year, Republicans in the House filed two separate bills to cut early voting days, but neither got a hearing.
