Keeping Tabs on the Elections Board’s Absentee Ballot Settlement | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is Lindsay Marchello.


    Fewer than six weeks from the 2020 general election, two of the five members of the State Board of Elections walked off the job. Republicans are disgusted. They say they were misled by information from the board. Its staff. State Attorney General Josh Stein. Together, the Democratic majority handled a proposed settlement in a lawsuit over absentee ballots.

    Parties in the North Carolina Alliance of Retired Americans v. North Carolina State Board of Elections filed a joint motion calling on a judge to approve a settlement in the case. The lawsuit, led by Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, challenged a series of changes lawmakers made to the absentee ballot process in June.

    The Republican-led General Assembly was shut out of settlement negotiations, even though its leaders were defendants-intervenors in the case.

    Republican leaders have accused Democrats Stein, Gov. Roy Cooper, and the state elections board of colluding with Elias to change election law, even as the election is underway. More than a million voters have requested absentee ballots. More than 200,000 of them have been cast.

    Here's a quick review:

    Sept. 24

• Lt. Gov. Dan Forest says he sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr requesting an investigation into how Stein and the state elections board negotiated the settlement. "The fact that an executive agency would dare enter into an agreement that attempts to make substantial changes to our election law less than six weeks before the election raises serious concerns about the motives of all involved," Forest said in the letter.
• If a judge approves the settlement, legislative leaders will almost certainly file an appeal, Lauren Horsch, a spokeswoman for Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, told Carolina Journal.
• Twitter temporarily restricted the account of Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, after the House election committee chair tweeted that Cooper and Stein are colluding with "DC Democrats to undermine election laws the General Assembly recently passed in a bipartisan manner."

    Sept. 23

• The NCSBE's only Republican members resigned in protest over the handling of the settlement. Ken Raymond and David Black said they were misled into believing the board had to settle the lawsuit over absentee ballot procedures instead of going to court. In his resignation letter, Black said it was his understanding a witness signature would still be required. The settlement allows for a workaround to the witness requirement. Stein's office didn't advise the board that a lot of the concessions made in the settlement have been denied by courts, Raymond wrote in his letter. "It is impossible to have true bipartisanship when both sides of the political aisle do not have the important and vital information needed to make the right decisions," Raymond wrote. The board's legal staff provided legal memos prior to every board meeting and answered any board members' questions, Pat Gannon, the NCSBE spokesman, said in a news release.
• In a blog post, Andy Jackson, elections policy analyst at the Civitas Institute, writes Thursday, Sept. 24, it could be that "Black and Raymond have offered the first two of what will be a string of resignations."

    Sept. 22

• The elections board announced a settlement was reached in the N.C. Alliance of Retired Americans' lawsuit over changes to absentee ballot procedure. If approved by a judge, the settlement would allow a voter who fails to include either their signature or a witness signature to fix the mistake by providing an affidavit. In essence, an absentee ballot could be counted without a witness signature. Election law requires one witness to affirm the voter's identity. The settlement also would allow absentee ballots to be accepted nine days after the election so long as they're postmarked on or before election day.

    Aug.18

• The N.C. Alliance for Retired Americans, a union-backed group, filed a lawsuit challenging absentee voting processes adopted to respond to COVID-19. The plaintiffs wanted the state to extend early voting hours, put prepaid postage on absentee ballot envelopes, extend the deadline to accept absentee ballots postmarked by election day, and loosen the witness requirement.

    June 12

• Cooper signs House Bill 1169, or the Bipartisan Elections Act of 2020, into law. Under H.B. 1169 only one witness — instead of two — needs to affirm a voter's identity. Additionally, the law gives more time for county elections boards to approve absentee ballot applications. It requires a barcode on those applications to track the ballot. Lawmakers agreed to appropriate more than $4 million to the state elections board to respond to COVID-19. The bill passed 105-14 in the House and 37-12 in the Senate.