North Carolina

North Carolina: New state board guidance on unsealed inner envelopes leads to higher mail-in ballot rejection rates | Patricia Mazzei/The New York Times

Voting rights groups and local election officials warned that a new directive from North Carolina's Republican-majority State Board of Elections requiring the rejection of mail-in ballots with unsealed inner envelopes has resulted in a statewide rejection rate of roughly 3 percent, with higher spikes in larger counties. While state election officials defended the rule as a necessary measure to protect ballot integrity, critics and a federal judge who declined an eleventh-hour request to block the guidance noted it could potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters in a state known for razor-thin margins. Read Article

North Carolina elections board to notify 1,392 voters flagged as potential noncitizens | Ahmed Jallow/NC Newsline

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is issuing notices to 1,392 registered voters flagged as potential noncitizens following cross-referencing with the federal Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. Because the SAVE system tracks historical immigration records, critics highlight that it frequently produces outdated matches by flagging naturalized U.S. citizens who obtained citizenship after their initial license or federal applications. Relying on this database places an unjustified burden on lawful U.S. citizens to affirmatively locate and submit official proof of citizenship, such as passports or birth certificates, to maintain their active voting status ahead of the election. Read Article

North Carolina: Mail-in ballot dispute scheduled for Oct. 14 federal court hearing | The Carolina Journal

A U.S. District judge has scheduled an October 14 federal court hearing in Winston-Salem to hear arguments on a preliminary injunction challenging North Carolina's newly implemented mail-in ballot regulations. The lawsuit alleges that the State Board of Elections' new Republican majority rushed through eleventh-hour rules on September 4 without public input. Plaintiffs argue that the new guidelines, which mandate the rejection of absentee ballots submitted in unsealed inner envelopes without an opportunity to cure and permit standardless signature matching across county boards, violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act by threatening to arbitrarily disenfranchise thousands of voters. Read Article

North Carolina: A federal lawsuit challenges new requirements for absentee ballot returns | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

Three North Carolina nonprofit organizations and two voters are suing over new absentee ballot requirements that put votes in jeopardy of being discarded. The North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, Down Home North Carolina, and two voters filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against the state Board of Elections and elections boards in Guilford and Durham over the directives the state board adopted earlier this month. The lawsuit asks the court to block the requirements for the November 2026 election and future elections. The state board adopted the new requirements in a 3-2 vote along party lines, with Democrats opposed, on the same day that the first absentee ballots of the 2026 general election were mailed out to voters. According to the new requirements, voters who don’t seal their ballots in an inner envelope inside the mailing envelope will have their ballots discarded. Those voters will be sent another ballot. But voters won’t have time to receive new ballots if problems are discovered on the Saturday before Election Day through Election Day, the lawsuit says. Read Article

North Carolina: Politically divided court panel upholds GOP takeover of state elections board | Will Doran/WRAL

A shift in political control of North Carolina's elections administration can remain in place, the state Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday, in a major win for Republicans as the 2026 midterm approach. The 2-1 ruling divided the court's three-judge panel along party lines, with Republicans in favor and the lone Democrat writing a dissent. For more than 100 years, until now, elections have been controlled by the governor in North Carolina. Republican state lawmakers tried multiple times to seize power for themselves under former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, but those efforts were shot down in court as unconstitutional and then, later, at the ballot box when voters in 2018 rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to let the changes happen. Read Article

North Carolina Board of Elections approves new mail-in ballot guidelines before voting | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

In a split vote, the North Carolina State Board of Elections approved new guidelines for mail-in ballots on Friday, just hours before those ballots were sent to voters. The new policies do not change how ballots are delivered to voters who have requested them, but they do alter the standards by which election officials decide whether to count a returned mail-in ballot. A major point of contention among the board was a provision that directs county officials to “spoil” a mail-in ballot if the inner envelope containing the ballot is not properly sealed. In this scenario, the returned ballot would not be counted, but the affected voter would be contacted and sent a new one. They could also still vote in-person. Read Article

The North Carolina elections rules that aren’t quite rules yet | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Absentee voting begins this week, and early voting isn’t far off. But North Carolina voters won’t have to worry about recently proposed changes to absentee voting, photo ID exception forms or voting site conduct rules until next year because of a quirk in the law. The State Board of Elections spent the summer drafting, reviewing and approving 15 sets of rules that would impact which absentee ballots are counted, how election officials deal with photo ID exception forms and what level of noise is allowed outside voting sites, among other issues. Last week, the Rules Review Commission approved those rules, but in each case, more than 10 people formally requested legislative review. When that happens, there’s a delay in implementation to give state lawmakers time to review and potentially reject the rule changes. Read Article

North Carolina governor pushes to block new rules targeting mail-in ballots, voter ID | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

Democratic Gov. Josh Stein on Wednesday urged officials to delay the adoption of new election rules that would set new conditions on mail-in ballots and make it easier to throw out ballots cast by voters who don’t provide photo ID. “Our state’s elections administrators should seek to make it easier — not harder — for eligible North Carolinians to lawfully make their voice heard at the ballot box and have confidence their vote will be respected,” Stein wrote in a letter shared with The News & Observer. “Unfortunately, the ... proposed rules undercut those core democratic principles, and implementing such changes so close to an election invites confusion and undermines faith in our democratic process.” The proposed rules, which passed the Republican-majority State Board of Elections in party-line votes last month, are set to be heard by the state’s Rules Review Commission on Thursday. Read Article

North Carolina Democratic Governor vetoes Republican-backed ‘anti-voter’ North Carolina elections bill | Christine Zhu/NC Newsline

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein vetoed a controversial elections law bill on Monday, saying the veto was necessary to defend voting rights. House Bill 958 includes provisions that would reduce early voting periods during primaries and special elections, require state Auditor Dave Boliek to conduct post-election audits of county election systems, and use federal databases with known problems to identify people who have died but remain on the voter rolls. “Our right to vote is precious. It’s the fundamental right that underpins every other right that we possess,” Stein said during a ceremony at the executive mansion, flanked by Democratic state lawmakers. “That’s why I will always protect you and your right to vote, and that’s why I am vetoing this anti-voter law today.” Read Article

North Carolina auditor’s office liaison invoked state GOP wishes in some county early voting plans | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

A staff member in the North Carolina auditor’s office used mentions of the wishes of his boss and the state Republican Party in an attempt to sway decisions on at least two counties’ early voting plans. Hundreds of pages produced as a result of public records requests reveal the extent to which Dallas Woodhouse, a former elections liaison for state Auditor Dave Boliek, pushed for early voting sites in particular locations and against them in others. Woodhouse recommended that counties eliminate Sunday voting hours, advised county chairs on bargaining tactics to reach unanimous approval for early voting plans that Democrats didn’t like, and told two county elections chairs what Republicans on the state Board of Elections would or wouldn’t approve and what the state Republican Party wanted. Read Article

North Carolina: lawmakers send two big election bills to governor | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

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.. Read Article

North Carolina Senate splits massive elections bill into 2, sends them back to House with changes | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

State senators divided the wide-ranging bill into two separate election bills. While most of the provisions are the same, senators made one major addition: one of the Senate bills would cut the early voting period from 17 to 10 days for primary, runoff and special elections. A few provisions in the House election bill also were missing from the Senate’s bills. They include a proposed second try at a signature verification pilot program, restrictions on foreign nationals’ financial involvement in elections and an explicit ban on so-called Never Residents’ ability to vote in federal elections in North Carolina. Never Residents are U.S. citizens who inherited citizenship from their parents or guardians who last lived in North Carolina, despite never having lived in the state themselves. Recent state court rulings prohibit them from voting in state and local contests. Read Article

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