This article was originally published by Carolina Public Press.
By Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
Carolina Public Press is an independent, in-depth and investigative nonprofit news service for North Carolina.
After a year of work, North Carolina lawmakers agreed on a pair of wide-ranging election bills Tuesday evening that would shorten the primary early voting period, allow challenges of early voted ballots after Election Day and extend some ballot counting and curing deadlines, among other policy changes.
Now, the power is in Gov. Josh Stein’s hands. He can sign the election bills into law, veto them or allow them to become law without his signature. Stein indicated late Tuesday that he would indeed veto the more controversial of the bills.
The first of the two election bills, House Bill 834, passed with some Democratic support in a vote of 74-35. The second, House Bill 958, fell along party lines, in a 62-46 vote.
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Consequently, Republicans would likely have enough votes to override a veto of HB834. However, Stein has not indicated he would veto that one. The closer margins on HB958, which Stein has said he would veto, suggest it would be difficult for Republican legislators to override the governor’s veto of that bill.
House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, told reporters he doubts lawmakers will come back to override any vetoes before the November election. They’ll have to wait until the planned post-election session.
“Hopefully we don’t have to worry about that, and the governor just signs it and doesn’t veto it,” he said Tuesday prior to Stein’s indication of his plans.
Hall added that the pair of bills make elections more transparent and clarify who can and cannot vote in North Carolina.
“Folks who are legally authorized to vote should be able to vote,” he said. “And the reality is, nobody has a difficult time voting in this state who’s eligible to vote.”
Controversial election bill House Bill 958
One of the election bills was more controversial: HB958. All Democrats and unaffiliated lawmakers voted against the bill, including some frequent swing voters.
Early voting period: While a provision to shorten the primary early voting period from 17 to 10 days is new to House Bill 958, it’s not a novel idea. This session, several lawmakers proposed cutting early voting days to some degree.
County election directors told Carolina Public Press that they were prepared for any outcome, but preferred that the general election early voting period stay intact. Some said lower turnout during primary elections would make a 10-day early voting period manageable.
Meanwhile, voting advocates argued that a longer early voting period gave people more time to decide how they wanted to vote and more opportunities to cast a ballot, while keeping lines shorter.
Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, noted that a “significant portion” of elections in North Carolina are decided in the primary.
“Most of us in this chamber are here because we won a primary,” she said. “I think cutting back on primary days, you need to think about that piece of the calculus, and I think that’s a bad move.”
Hall said two weeks of primary early voting is “plenty of time,” considering the lower turnout.
Challenging early voted ballots: If House Bill 958 becomes law, anyone could challenge an early voted ballot up to three days after Election Day.
Under current law, challenges must happen at the time ballots are cast, with the exception of absentee ballots.
Rep. Phil Rubin, D-Wake, called the provision “the Griffin,” referring to 2024 failed state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin, who challenged tens of thousands of ballots in an attempt to overturn his loss.
Rubin said it was dangerous to allow candidates to wait to see election results before deciding whether to pursue ballot challenges.
“You don’t want candidates strategically filing challenges just to try and win an election,” Rubin said. “We should win elections at the ballot box, not in the courtroom.”
After bipartisan negotiations, the final House version of the bill only allowed challenges up to the close of the polls, but the Senate brought the extension back.
Other Democrats took issue with the Senate undoing some of the bipartisan work that led to the final House bill. Rep. Amber Baker, D-Forsyth, encouraged lawmakers to vote against the bill, and send a message as a House chamber that “we stand united on the work that we’ve done.”
Due process for dead voters: This spring, the State Board of Elections announced that it found about 34,000 potentially dead voters on the state’s voter rolls using the federal Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.
That would be about 0.46% of North Carolina’s registered voters. State election officials have been using the SAVE system to crosscheck the state’s voter rolls with several federal databases to root out ineligible voters. That could include noncitizens, voters who have moved from one jurisdiction to another or dead voters.
Every week, the state Department of Health and Human Services sends the election board a list of people who have died so that they can be removed from the voter rolls. So, it’s likely that many of the 34,000 voters identified by SAVE did not notify North Carolina election officials before moving, and subsequently, dying.
HB958 requires the State Board executive director to distribute the names of dead voters identified by the SAVE system to county boards within a week of getting the information. Then, county boards must remove those voters from the rolls.
However, there is no process to confirm whether the identified dead voters are actually deceased. There’s no notice or challenge hearing before the voter is removed.
Rubin said lawmakers should include due process, especially considering the databases that SAVE uses are known to be incomplete and imperfect.
“It will lead to lawsuits,” he said. “It violates constitutional protections, and this bill could have guaranteed them.”
Late Tuesday, Gov. Stein posted to X that he would indeed veto this bill.
“Your vote is how you make sure that your government actually works for you and your family,” Stein wrote. “I will always defend your right to vote. I will veto House Bill 958 because it makes it harder for you to vote, introduces unnecessary chaos into our elections, and invites sore losers to overturn an election they lost.
“The bill passed with only Republican votes. Thank you to every single Democratic and Unaffiliated house member for standing against this bad bill. Now, I ask you to call your legislators and urge them to uphold the veto. Because in this democracy, the power rests with you — the people. Let’s keep it that way.”
More bipartisan support for House Bill 834
The other of the two election bills received bipartisan support.
It includes extended deadlines for counting provisional and absentee ballots, and fixing certain ballot issues, from three days after Election Day to five business days.
The bill outlines the process for securing ballots and electronic vote records between the end of the early voting period and Election Day. It clarifies that if a voter dies between casting their ballot and 11:59 p.m. on the day before the election, their vote does not count. There’s also a provision extending the time certain expired Class C driver’s licenses can count as valid voter IDs to the end of 2027.
Finally, HB834 allows people who want to challenge State Board decisions in court to either choose Wake County Superior Court, where all challenges occur now, or the superior court in their home county.
While Harrison said she appreciates the deadline changes, she doesn’t like the ability to sue outside of Wake County. It will lead to “judge shopping,” a process where plaintiffs try to file lawsuits wherever they think they’ll find the most sympathetic judge.
“That’s going to prove to be a real problem for fair judicial treatment of election issues,” she said.
Editor’s note: This article was revised to reflect news developments after it was initially posted.
