North Carolina

North Carolina: Mail-in ballots could be more easily thrown out, under new proposal | Will Doran/WRAL

Local elections officials around North Carolina would have more ability to throw out people’s mail-in ballots in the 2026 midterms and in future elections, under a new rule approved by the State Board of Elections on Monday. The tense debate over the rules Monday broke down in a party-line dispute. It came on the heels of a similar meeting last week, where the board also voted along party lines to give local elections officials more power to kick people out of polling places, and to more easily throw out ballots cast by people who lacked voter photo identification. While state law requires voter ID, it also allows for exemptions — such as for people with religious objections to being photographed, or whose ID was stolen shortly before the election. While those exemptions can only currently be denied in a unanimous and bipartisan vote by local elections officials, the proposed new rule would instead allow them to be thrown out in strictly party-line votes — in other words, people could be stopped from voting even if some local officials believed they were legitimate voters who should be allowed to cast a ballot. Read Article

North Carolina: ‘We’re supporting a lie’: Elections Board votes to throw out ballots more easily | Will Doran/WRAL

It could soon be easier for North Carolina elections officials to throw out people’s ballots during the 2026 midterm elections and beyond, under new rules approved Thursday by the State Board of Elections. The new changes, backed by the Republican majority on the State Board of Elections and opposed by the board's Democratic minority, make it easier for elections officials to reject people’s excuses for not having required voter identification. They'd also make it easier to kick people out of polling places, in addition to other changes. The board also plans to vote Monday on similar rules making it easier to throw out mail-in ballots. The rules aren't immediately official. After approval by the elections board they must also be approved by the state's Rules Review Commission — which also has a Republican majority and which one of the election board's Republican members said Thursday will likely also sign off on the changes. Read Article

North Carolina House passes its controversial elections bill with only GOP votes | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

A divided state House approved an elections bill Tuesday that clears a path for more ballot challenges, election audits, and registration removals. Democrats roundly criticized House Bill 958, saying it will make unfounded voter challenges more likely, sow confusion, inject partisanship into election administration, and make it harder for eligible voters to have their votes count. “You don’t know the fear of having a government agency coming in and turning your life upside down,” said House Democratic Leader Robert Reives (D-Chatham). The House approved the bill in a party-line 66-47 vote. It now goes to the Senate for consideration. Rep. Phil Rubin (D-Wake) argued the bill is based on the false premise that the voter rolls are overrun with ineligible voters, when study after study has shown that isn’t the case.“This bill legislates a fantasy, and it chases ghosts,” he said. NC House passes its controversial elections bill with only GOP votes • NC Newsline

North Carolina House set to vote on sweeping election bill despite opposition to overseas voter restrictions | Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline

The North Carolina House of Representatives is expected to vote on a hotly contested election reform bill next week after it passed the powerful House Rules Committee on Wednesday. House Bill 958 passed the committee by a margin of 14-9, becoming one of the rare bills to not receive the support of all Republicans on the panel. That’s in part due to backlash over provisions that would require voter identification from military and overseas voters, among other restrictions. The bill did not arrive on the House floor Wednesday as lawmakers took up a slew of veto overrides instead. Speaker Destin Hall (R-Caldwell) told members of the media he expects a vote next week, though there may be additional changes coming to the bill. Read Article

North Carolina: Tons of elections changes crammed into one omnibus bill | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

While a group of lawmakers considered the latest version of a wide-ranging elections omnibus bill, a couple dozen protesters waited outside, holding their phones to their ears to hear what was happening inside the committee room. When lawmakers dispersed, they held up red flags and booed in disapproval, bringing the spirit of the World Cup to Raleigh. The 36-page elections omnibus bill, House Bill 958, touches on scores of election issues, including ballot counting deadlines, ranked choice voting and the auditor’s involvement in elections. Tuesday’s version tacked on a dozen pages to the last version of the bill, presented in July 2025. Bill sponsor Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, emphasized that it was still a “work in progress.” Democratic committee members Reps. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, and Phil Rubin, D-Wake, worked with Blackwell over the weekend on a few changes, he said. There could be more on the way. Read Article

North Carolina: Republican election officials say GOP and state auditor pressured them to reject campus voting site | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

Republican election officials in Jackson County say they were pressured — by their own party and the state auditor’s office, one says — to reject a plan for an early voting site on Western Carolina University’s campus. “I’ve been told that if I don’t vote a particular way, that they will do whatever they have to do to remove me from the board,” Republican board member Jay Pavey said. The comments came during a stunning board meeting on Tuesday morning in which Pavey sided with the board’s Democratic minority to approve the contested polling site for use in the midterm elections this fall. “I know that I’m bucking my party by this, and I may very well be a one-term person on the board of elections, but if that’s it, that’s fine,” he said. “I will stand on this hill and I will die on this hill.” Tuesday’s meeting also followed the unexpected resignation of one of the board’s Republican members. Read Article

North Carolina elections board hired a lawyer who was also suing it | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

State elections director Sam Hayes hired one of North Carolina Republicans’ go-to lawyers to defend the state Board of Elections in a lawsuit this year, even though that lawyer was representing clients with active lawsuits against the board in four other cases in state and federal court. Phil Strach represents Republican legislators, the Republican National Committee and the state Republican party in redistricting and election cases. As Hayes sought to hire Strach, Strach asked Hayes to sign a waiver acknowledging that his firm was representing board adversaries in other cases. “Your consent signifies a waiver of any and all conflicts on behalf of other Firm clients which may exist in present unrelated matters or could arise in future unrelated matters due to this representation,” Strach’s January 30 letter said. “You agree to not use our representation in the New Engagement as a ground for seeking our disqualification in such matters,” Strach’s letter said. Read Article

North Carolina elections board considers new rules for photo ID, polling places | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

A new proposal would make it easier for North Carolina county boards of election to throw out ballots of people who don’t show photo ID when they vote. Under the proposal, county boards would no longer have to agree unanimously that voters lied about the reasons they didn’t have ID. A majority on the county boards, on which Republicans currently hold three of five seats, could determine that voters were lying and reject their ballots. The changes to the rejection threshold are part of a list of proposed election rules governing absentee ballots and conduct at polling places. The state Board of Elections took its first step Wednesday to advance the proposals, voting 3-2 to put them out for public comment. The board’s two Democratic members were opposed. After the 60-day comment period, the board would vote on any revisions. The Rules Review Commission would have to approve. Read Article

North Carolina: No voter ID? Proposal could make it easier for election officials to reject your ballot | Paul Specht/WRAL

State election leaders may soon make it easier for county officials to reject ballots submitted by voters seeking an exception to North Carolina’s voter identification requirements. North Carolina voters are required to show a form of ID — such as driver’s license or a U-S passport — in order to cast a ballot. Voters who are unable to show ID can seek an exemption from the rule by testifying that they are a victim of a recent natural disaster, have a religious objection to being photographed, or have an impediment to obtaining ID, such as a disability or lack of transportation. Under current rules, county elections boards can reject a voter’s exemption request if they believe it to be false — but only if board members vote unanimously. The North Carolina State Board of Elections is considering changing the rule so that local boards can reject those exemption requests by a majority vote, rather than a unanimous vote. Read Article

North Carolina to feed data to Homeland Security under new noncitizen removal rules | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

The North Carolina State Board of Elections on Thursday approved a new process for partnering with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to remove potential noncitizens from the voter rolls. The rules, which the board’s Republican majority passed in a 3-2 vote, formalize the board’s new agreement with Homeland Security, which will run potentially millions of voters at a time through its citizenship databases. The state could begin uploading voter data to DHS as early as Friday. The board’s two Democrats fiercely opposed the rules, saying they did not trust DHS to provide the state with accurate data and believed it could disenfranchise eligible voters. “We are now saying you have to carry your papers,” board member Jeff Carmon said. Read Article

North Carolina’s plan to scrub voter rolls has been a disaster in other states | Paige Masten/Charlotte Observer

North Carolina is prepared to partner with the Trump administration to scrub alleged noncitizens from its voter rolls — an unnecessary effort that will almost certainly create more problems than it solves. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has proposed a set of rules outlining the use of government records and databases, most notably the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, to flag and remove “presumptive noncitizens” from the state’s voter rolls. The board is currently negotiating a deal with the Department of Homeland Security to feed potentially millions of voters at a time into SAVE in search of noncitizens, The News & Observer previously reported. Other states, such as Texas, have already begun working with DHS to mass-verify the citizenship status of their voters through SAVE. Election officials cite this as a reason why North Carolina should join in. The problem is, many of those states have encountered serious issues with the database. Read Article

North Carolina’s elections overhaul raises national alarm bells | Paige Masten/Charlotte Observer

North Carolina is once again getting the worst kind of national attention, thanks to our Republican legislators. A new report from The New York Times identified North Carolina as one of several potential targets for President Donald Trump’s goal to “take over” voting procedures in parts of the country. The report said that North Carolina Republicans have overseen “what may be the most consequential reconfiguration of an electoral system of any swing state.” or nearly 10 years, Republican lawmakers fought to take away election appointment power away from Democratic governors. In 2024, they finally succeeded, passing a bill that wrested control of election administration from the newly elected governor (a Democrat) and placed it in the hands of the newly elected state auditor (a Republican). North Carolina is the only state in the country where the auditor oversees election administration. Now, the State Board of Elections has a Republican majority, as do the elections boards in all 100 counties. Read Article

North Carolina State Board of Elections names director of election security ahead of primary | Theresa Opeka/The Carolina Journal

With a little over a week to go before the state’s primary elections, Mount Olive native Ron Herring has been named as the director of election security and enforcement for the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), effective immediately. State board Executive Director Sam Hayes made the announcement on Monday. As director of election security and enforcement, Herring will oversee investigative operations; support election security initiatives; and work with federal, state, and local partners to protect the integrity of North Carolina’s elections. Read Article

North Carolina letter sent by the State Board of Elections sparks voter registration confusion | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

A letter sent to 241,000 North Carolina voters about their registration status sparked confusion and worry among some, who flooded county election offices with hundreds of calls and visits amid an already busy primary election season. The letter, which was sent by the State Board of Elections in recent weeks, informed recipients that their voter registration lacked certain required identification information. It asked them to provide either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to clear up the issue. What the letter did not say was that recipients would have their vote counted normally regardless of whether they responded or not. Kelly McPherson, director of the Dare County Board of Elections, said that in the days following the letter’s arrival, her office fielded over 100 phone calls and visits from voters worried that they were now ineligible to cast their ballot. Read Article

North Carolina: Governor, Republican lawmakers square off in court over control of elections | Will Doran/WRAL

North Carolina appellate court judges heard arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit that could determine which political party is in charge of setting the rules for and confirming the results of elections in the state. It could also pave the way for a mass reshuffling of executive power in the state. The lawsuit pits North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein against top state lawmakers. Stein, a Democrat, argues that North Carolina Republican lawmakers violated the state constitution in late 2024 when they passed a law taking control of state election administration from the Democratic governor, giving it instead to the incoming Republican state auditor. The shift, implemented last year, came after nearly a decade of previous failed attempts by Republican lawmakers to give themselves power over elections. Read Article

North Carolina Board of Elections asks 241,000 voters to verify identity | David N. Bass/The Carolina Journal

Nearly a quarter million registered voters in North Carolina will be asked to verify their identity to ensure the accuracy of current voter rolls, according to a Feb. 3 press release from the NC Board of Elections. The state elections board is sending letters to more than 241,000 voters who provided identification information that didn’t validate against other government databases. Voters may confirm their information by providing their driver’s license, social security numbers, or by ensuring the name on their voter registration matches other official government records. The letters noted that the mismatch could be due to a simple error — such as “differences in how a name is spelled in each record such as adding or omitting hyphens apostrophes, or space, or the use of a prior legal name, such as a maiden name, in one of the records … The mismatch may also be caused by a date of birth or [driver’s license number] or [social security number] listing a number in the wrong field or transposing numbers in the records.” Read Article

North Carolina students sue election officials over rejection of campus voting sites | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

A group of college students from three North Carolina universities — including the nation’s largest HBCU — filed a federal lawsuit against North Carolina election officials on Tuesday after the state rejected efforts to place early voting sites on their campuses. The lawsuit, which asks the court to order the restoration of the voting sites before early voting begins next month, accuses North Carolina’s Republican-led State Board of Elections of “targeted efforts to place additional, unnecessary, burdensome, and ultimately unjustifiable obstacles” on students. The litigation comes just weeks after the elections board voted against including on-campus early voting sites at Western Carolina University, UNC Greensboro and NC A&T State University. Read Article

North Carolina: Amid protests, elections board rejects campus voting sites and Sunday voting in several counties | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

NC A&T State University students packed the North Carolina State Board of Elections meeting in Raleigh to support an early voting site on their campus for the upcoming primaries. When the board adopted a plan without a voting site on the Greensboro campus, students stood with their signs near the front of the room behind the presenters’ desk. After a student said board members wouldn’t look them in the eye, board Chairman Francis De Luca threatened to call the cops on students if they didn’t leave. One student said the outcome would have been different if the group was white. De Luca said he resented that suggestion. Jeff Carmon, the state board’s only Black member, walked up to the students and encouraged them to keep working. The student protest was just one mark in a contentious meeting where the state board’s Republican majority decided that Elon University and Western Carolina University also will not have early voting sites for the primary, even though those colleges have a history of hosting polling places. Read Article

North Carolina: Inside the GOP’s Decade-Long Push to Seize Power From the State’s Democratic Governors | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

In November 2024, Democrat Josh Stein scored an emphatic victory in the race to become North Carolina’s governor, drubbing his Republican opponent by almost 15 percentage points. His honeymoon didn’t last long, however. Two weeks after his win, the North Carolina legislature’s Republican supermajority fast-tracked a bill that would transform the balance of power in the state. Its authors portrayed the 131-page proposal, released publicly only an hour before debate began, as a disaster relief measure for victims of Hurricane Helene. But much of it stripped powers from the state’s governor, taking away authority over everything from the highway patrol to the utilities commission. Most importantly, the bill eliminated the governor’s control over appointments to the state elections board, which sets voting rules and settles disputes in the swing state’s often close elections. Read Article

North Carolina: New GOP-controlled local election boards reject early voting sites on some college campuses | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Disagreements have always existed over early voting sites in North Carolina, no matter who is in power. County election board members regularly debate over whether to allow Sunday early voting, how many sites to use, where they should be located and how long they should be open. But in Jackson and Guilford counties, Democratic board members are raising concerns over the exclusion of early voting sites that serve college students from 2026 primary election plans. In Jackson County, Republican board members voted against Democratic board members to remove an early voting site from Western Carolina University’s campus. In Guilford County, Republicans denied Democrats’ request to add early voting sites on North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s campuses. Read Article

North Carolina: Trump ally admits goal of eliminating same-day registration in federal voting rights trial | George Chidi/The Guardian

During a federal trial in North Carolina over whether a new voter registration law discriminates against college students, a prominent rightwing election integrity activist previewed Republicans’ long-range plans to end same-day registration. Judge Thomas Schroeder is deliberating over the future of provisions in Senate bill 747, which increased registration requirements for voters who cast ballots on the same day they register to vote during North Carolina’s early voting period. Schroeder called for briefs at the end of November after a week-long trial in Winston-Salem. Cleta Mitchell, an ally of Donald Trump in his bid to overturn the 2020 election and the founder of the Election Integrity Network, offered testimony in depositions and hearings in the case, but only after losing a legally strenuous fight to avoid participating in the case. Read Article

North Carolina: Turnover in Board of Elections staff follows shift in control | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

A recent wave of staffing changes at the State Board of Elections began with a bill originally intended to make the Moravian star North Carolina’s state star. But as is often the case at the legislature, the final product ended up entirely different. After the state House gave its stamp of approval, the state Senate stripped House Bill 125’s original Moravian star language and replaced it with various budgetary allocations and adjustments. The State Board of Elections, newly helmed by Executive Director Sam Hayes, won big. The agency received $15 million to finish modernization of the state’s outdated election system, $1.5 million for litigation costs and $1.1 million to pay for seven new election board positions. Read Article

North Carolina elections board reveals new partisan voice | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

A recent NC Board of Elections news release berating the head of the state Democratic Party took some observers by surprise. The public face of the agency has historically remained above the political fray, focusing on voting rules and routine business. That changed Saturday, Nov. 1, the final day of voting in the 2025 municipal elections. The online portal voters use to look at their sample ballots wasn’t working that day. North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton called out Republican state Auditor Dave Boliek, who was recently given a role in state elections. The election board’s news release didn’t explain what happened to the portal, but castigated Clayton for spreading misinformation about the problem. It also praised state elections director Sam Hayes, and blamed the former director and Democratic leaders for not updating aging software. Read Article

North Carolina: Voting rights advocates prep for federal trial over ‘election integrity’ law | Will Doran/WRAL

A federal trial scheduled for next week could help shape the rules that govern the 2026 elections in North Carolina, as voting rights advocates challenge a law approved by Republican lawmakers who said it would protect election integrity. The trial could be happening in Winston-Salem at the same time state lawmakers return to Raleigh to further assert their influence ahead of next year's midterms — by attempting to further gerrymander the state's U.S. House of Representatives districts in favor of GOP candidates. Marques Thompson is the organizing director for the group Democracy NC. He said Tuesday that the law his group is suing over, as well as the proposed new maps, both have a shared goal: Making it less likely that the will of the people matters when it comes to who wins or loses elections. Read Article

North Carolina: Ahead of 2026 midterms, courts rule on key NC election practices | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

A federal judge on Monday approved a settlement between the North Carolina State Board of Elections and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice regarding over 100,000 voters with incomplete registrations. That settlement largely codifies the board’s existing Registration Repair project, which began this summer and aims to collect driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers from voters who lack the information in the state’s databases. Since beginning the project, the board has reduced the number of voters with missing information by 22%. “Our plan is working, and this number will continue to drop as more voters become aware of this effort and fix their registrations,” said Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director. Read Article

North Carolina updates thousands of voter registration records to fix missing IDs | Gary D. Robertson/associated Press

Voter registration records for more than 20,000 people in North Carolina have been successfully amended thus far in an effort by election officials to add missing identification numbers. In mid-July, the State Board of Elections began formally an effort that seeks to resolve a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department that focused on voter registration records that lacked either a voter’s driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. Federal and state laws have directed that election officials must request this ID information since 2004 of new registrants, but for about a decade the state’s registration form failed to make clear that voters were supposed to provide it if they had it. Read Article

North Carolina elections board confirmed ID lawsuit resolution, approved early voting plans | Theresa Opeka/Carolina Journal

As a matter of procedure, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) read over a settlement reached in the case of the Republican National Committee (RNC) v. the NCSBE at their meeting on Friday. NCSBE General Counsel Paul Cox said that under the Open Meetings law, it is required that once a public body makes a settlement in a closed session, that settlement, once executed, has to be reported out at the next public meeting. State and national Republican groups and the NCSBE reached a deal last month to end the lawsuit over voter identification and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s digital ID. The elections board agreed not to accept any “electronic identification” as a voter ID unless the General Assembly approves a new law permitting that type of ID. Read Article

North Carolina: All-GOP Appeals Court panel ruled against Stein in elections board dispute | The Carolina Journal

Three Republican members of the North Carolina Court of Appeals issued the April order that blocked a lower court ruling favoring Democratic Gov. Josh Stein in a dispute over state elections board appointments. Appeals Court rules blocked release of the names of participating judges for 90 days. Now the court has revealed that Judges Julee Flood, Michael Stading, and Tom Murry issued the April 30 order. All three are Republicans. Republicans outnumber Democrats, 12-3, on the state’s second-highest court. The Appeals Court’s action paved the way for State Auditor Dave Boliek to make new appointments to state and county elections boards. The state Supreme Court later split, 5-2, in upholding appellate judges’ decision. Read Article

North Carolina elections board OKs changes to military, overseas voting | Theresa Opeka/The Carolina Journal

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted unanimously on several items at its meeting Monday morning, including changes to voting for military and overseas voters. The changes stem from protests by Republican Justice Jefferson Griffin, who challenged Democratic candidate Justice Allison Riggs for a seat on the state Supreme Court. In a legal dispute that moved through state and federal court, Griffin challenged more than 65,000 ballots cast in November’s General Election. After months of litigation, Griffin conceded to Riggs six months after the election, but not before changes were made to the way overseas and military ballots were counted. The Court of Appeals ruled that military and overseas voters must comply with the photo ID requirement when voting absentee in state and local nonfederal contests. Also, “never residents,” those with a family connection to North Carolina, for example, their parents lived here before moving overseas, are not eligible to vote in state and local elections, but can vote in federal elections. Read Article