North Carolina bill could change voting rules if state GOP majority overrides veto

North Carolina may make it more difficult to vote by mail, as the Republican-controlled state legislature is expected to override a veto from Gov. Roy Cooper (D) on a sweeping absentee ballot bill. 

Senate Bill 747 would reduce the period of time an absentee ballot can be received in order to count, as well as increases signature scrutiny and other measures which advocates say would result in less rightful votes being counted.

“This legislation has nothing to do with election security and everything to do with Republicans keeping and gaining power,” Cooper said in his veto message last month. “It requires valid votes to be tossed out unnecessarily, schemes to restrict early voting and absentee ballots, encourages voter intimidation and attempts to give Republican legislators the authority to decide contested election results.”

Specifically, the bill requires that mail-in ballots be received by the county board of elections by the time polls close on election day. In current North Carolina law and throughout most of the country, mail-in ballots must only be postmarked by election day, and have a few days to get to the vote counters through the mail.

Cooper said that change would invalidate many votes, even if the delay is caused by the U.S. Postal Service and not the voter. The changes target college students and people of color, who vote by mail at higher rates and are more likely to be Democrats, Cooper said.

Republicans have hailed it as a critical election security measure.

“The one thing this bill does do is it does improve voting in elections for the entire state,” state Rep. Grey Mills (R) said. “It’s not killing early voting — we’re improving early voting.”

The bill initially came under criticism because of the influence from the Election Integrity Network, a conservative activist group led by Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who assisted former President Trump’s election challenge lawsuit in Georgia. 

The group advocated for provisions in the bill which encourage partisan election observers to show up at polling places. Observers would be allowed to listen in to conversations between voters and election workers and take notes. 

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Common Cause and the NAACP said allowing observers that much access “crosses the line into an opportunity for voter intimidation and suppression, reminiscent of Reconstruction-era tactics by the Ku Klux Klan.”

Republicans have a veto-proof majority in the state legislature and are expected to overturn Cooper’s veto of the bill.