RALEIGH — North Carolina Republicans authorized vote-count restrictions and weakened Gov. Roy Cooper’s ability to oversee elections and other state regulatory bodies by overriding his vetoes. GOP supermajorities in the General Assembly overturned five vetoes Tuesday.
Two new laws address elections and voting, which will probably be a presidential battleground.
The new laws eliminate the governor’s power to appoint the State Board of Elections and give it to legislative leaders.
Another ends a three-day grace period to receive and count absentee ballots if they are postmarked by Election Day.
“If you value fair elections, bipartisan election management, an Election Day deadline, and having only citizens vote in elections, then you have much to celebrate today,” said Sen. Warren Daniel, R-Burke, and Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus, in a joint statement. “These are commonsense reforms that restore faith in our elections. Senate Democrats had a chance to support increasing transparency in our elections, but they chose to mislead voters and spread hyperbolic rhetoric. Overriding this veto ensures voters can go to the polls knowing that elections are being conducted in a fair, nonpartisan manner.”
Democrats immediately announced legal action after the General Assembly overrode the veto of Senate Bill 747, known as the “Elections Law Changes” bill, WTVD reported.
“Republican efforts to change the voting laws have nothing to do with election security and everything to do with manipulating elections to entrench their power,” Cooper said. “Every single eligible voter deserves fair access to the ballot box and to have their vote count, and North Carolinians will not stand for this voter suppression.”
The state elections board has five members, with the governor’s party historically holding three of the seats. Beginning Jan. 1, the board will be eight members, chosen by legislative leaders from both major parties and likely creating a 4-4 split among Democrats and Republicans.
Critics say these changes will lead to board impasses that will scale back the number of local early in-person voting sites and could send the outcomes of contested elections to the courts or the General Assembly to settle.
The law says the new state board also would have barely a week to decide whether to keep current state elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell on the job or hire someone else. If the board can’t decide, the decision would fall to Republican Senate leader Phil Berger.
Republicans were unhappy with Brinson Bell - hired by the Democratic majority in 2019 - for her role in a legal settlement that extended in 2020 the time for mailed-in ballot envelopes postmarked by the election date to be received and counted from three days after the election to nine days.
An omnibus voting law also enacted Tuesday in part would eliminate that three-day window and instead require mailed-in ballots be received by county election offices by the time in-person balloting ends at 7:30 p.m. on the date of the election in order to count.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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