North Carolina: Protecting voting rights after Hurricane Florence | Facing South

As the response to Hurricane Florence shifts from relief to recovery mode in the Carolinas, voting rights advocates are taking steps to ensure people living in or displaced from flood-stricken communities have access to the ballot in the upcoming election. Just days after the storm made landfall south of Wilmington on Sept. 14, the North Carolina NAACP announced it was launching a campaign to provide absentee ballot applications to registered voters in impacted counties. Under state law, any registered North Carolina voter may request an absentee ballot, no excuses needed, through 5 p.m. on Oct. 30. “It is imperative that while our communities struggle to recover from the devastating flooding and other destruction from this storm, citizens’ right to vote should not be impaired,” said Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, the group’s president.

North Carolina: Voter registration deadline extended for Hurricane Florence victims | WNCT

The voter registration deadline is extended for those impacted by Hurricane Florence. The extension is part of the Hurricane Florence Emergency Response Act. The deadline is now extended to 5 P.M. on October 15th. The change is for the 28 counties heavily impacted by the storm. In the East that includes: Lenoir, Pitt, Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Greene, Hyde, Jones, Onslow and Pamlico counties. In the remaining 72 counties, the deadlines remains Friday October 12th.

North Carolina: Lawmaker To Propose Bill To Address Voters Affected By Hurricane Florence | WFAE

The ballots for North Carolina’s upcoming election have had a number of delays as cases on amendments and party affiliation wound their way through the court. Just as ballots were finally on track to meet September’s deadline for printing, Hurricane Florence came along. Now state leaders are trying to ensure those hit hard by the storm can still easily vote. The state’s deadline to register to vote is coming up on Oct. 12. While many residents are still focused on recovering from the storm, House Elections Chairman David Lewis of Harnett County wants to extend the voter registration deadline to at least Oct. 15, similar to an extension that was provided after Hurricane Matthew. He plans to introduce a bill to do just that and make other election tweaks when state lawmakers convene today in a special session to consider relief options in the wake of Florence.

North Carolina: Legislator, state NAACP propose voting changes post-Florence | Associated Press

A civil rights group and key legislator are concerned enough about how residents displaced by Hurricane Florence will be able to vote that they’re seeking action on ballot and registration access. On the eve of special session addressing Florence relief, the state NAACP held a news conference Monday asking the state elections board to extend the traditional voter registration deadline from Oct. 12 to Oct. 17 in close to 30 eastern counties. But Republican Rep. David Lewis, a House Elections Committee chairman, said he’s put together legislation for Tuesday’s special session for Florence relief that would extend traditional registration until Oct. 15 in 28 counties currently declared federal disaster areas.

North Carolina: Bipartisan Furor as North Carolina Election Law Shrinks Early Voting Locations by Almost 20 Percent | ProPublica

In June, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation mandating that all early voting sites in the state remain open for uniform hours on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., a move supporters argued would reduce confusion and ultimately make early voting easier and more accessible. But with the start of early voting only weeks away, county election officials across the state — who previously had control over setting polling hours in their jurisdictions — say the new law has hamstrung their ability to best serve voters. Some officials in rural counties say they’ve had to shrink the number of early voting locations to accommodate the law’s longer hour requirements and stay within their budgets. A ProPublica analysis of polling locations shows that North Carolina’s 2018 midterm election will have nearly 20 percent fewer early voting locations than there were in 2014. Nearly half of North Carolina’s 100 counties are shutting down polling places, in part because of the new law. Poorer rural counties, often strapped for resources to begin with, are having a particularly difficult time adjusting to the new requirement.

North Carolina: Hurricane Florence could impact midterm elections in some North Carolina counties | The Daily Tar Heel

Even with Hurricane Florence over, North Carolina residents continue to feel its effects as many are still displaced or without power. These conditions not only impact the daily lives of residents but could also impact their ability to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.  Duke Energy released a statement on Sept. 19 that estimated 1.7 million customers lost power due to Hurricane Florence. Crews have restored power to 1.6 million customers, but that leaves 114,000 customers without power.  “Many of the remaining impacted customers are located in coastal and inland areas that experienced historic flooding, multiple road closures and significant structural damage,” the statement said.  Last week, Tideland EMC, which serves a portion of eastern North Carolina along the coast, reported that 77 percent of its customers were without power. Tideland has not yet released updated statistics. 

North Carolina: Florence complicates the election process. Will it keep people from voting? | News & Observer

Turnout may be tempered in the upcoming election after Hurricane Florence impaired North Carolina’s infrastructure, displaced thousands of voters and distracted from political issues as candidates jockey for favor. The deadly storm arrived just as door-knocking, campaign advertisements and fundraising started to ramp up. At stake this year are a state Supreme Court seat, congressional seats, six proposed constitutional amendments and control of North Carolina’s legislature, along with municipal races. Republicans control the legislature, and Democrats hope to gain influence by winning four House seats or six Senate seats to break the GOP supermajority. But Florence has thrown a wrench into the Republican and Democratic machines. It dumped record amounts of rain from the coast to the Piedmont, causing flooding that’s displaced countless residents and complicated the election preparation process.

North Carolina: In Rare Moment, GOP Sides With Democrats To Fight Elections Subpoena | WFAE

The North Carolina Board of Elections 9-0 vote last week to fight a wide-ranging subpoena from the U.S. Justice Department was a rare moment of bipartisanship in the state, with Republicans saying the federal government overreached in an apparent effort to fight voter fraud. The board’s four Republicans voted with the four Democratic members and one unaffiliated member. The U.S. Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have asked for more than 20 million election documents and ballots, from 2010. The subpoena asked for about 2.3 million absentee ballots from the last five years. Absentee ballots – which were mostly cast during early voting – are traceable to the voter. That means the federal government could have determined how people voted.

North Carolina: DMV also gets subpoena for voter documents | Associated Press

Federal investigators seeking a massive number of voting records from North Carolina election officials also want voter registration documents from the state Division of Motor Vehicles. A DMV spokesman confirmed Monday that the agency had received a subpoena recently from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Raleigh. Prosecutors want voter registration applications since 2010 that meet at least one of the several criteria, including applications from foreign-born applicants and from non-U.S. citizens “completed in a language other than English,” according to a copy of the subpoena. The state elections board is already fighting to block federal subpoenas sent to it and 44 county elections boards, calling them overly broad and unreasonable. The state board estimated those requests for ballots, poll books, absentee ballot requests, registration applications and other documents would cover more than 20 million records.

North Carolina: Justice Dept. Demand for North Carolina Voting Records Extended to D.M.V. | The New York Times

In a further sign of the sprawling nature of the Justice Department’s effort to collect voting records in North Carolina, prosecutors demanded eight years of information from the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The New York Times. The newly disclosed order, along with subpoenas sent to the state’s elections board and counties, appears linked to a federal inquiry into illegal voting by noncitizens. Under federal law, residents seeking to obtain or renew a driver’s license must be offered a chance to register to vote. The demand from the government seeks voter-registration forms submitted to the North Carolina D.M.V. by an array of applicants since 2010. The applicants include those who are foreign-born, said they were not citizens, did not produce a driver’s license as proof of identification, or displayed nonimmigrant visas or other documents “that reflect the applicant was not a United States citizen.”

North Carolina: Election Officials Get Extension for Voting Records Request | Wall Street Journal

Federal prosecutors on Thursday postponed a deadline for North Carolina election officials to provide voting records requested by federal immigration officials until after the Nov. 6 election. The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of North Carolina said in a letter that prosecutors would postpone the deadline until January and consider modifying the request, as long as election officials verified in writing that they wouldn’t destroy any relevant records. Prosecutors, at the request of immigration officials, had originally requested more than 20 million county and state records covering an eight-year period to be turned over by Sept. 25. North Carolina election officials had argued the effort required to collect the records would jeopardize their ability to prepare for this fall’s election.

North Carolina: Justice Department Demands Millions of North Carolina Voter Records, Confounding Elections Officials | The New York Times

Federal prosecutors have issued sweeping subpoenas demanding that millions of North Carolina voter records be turned over to immigration authorities by Sept. 25. With just two months to go before the midterms, the subpoenas threatened to sow chaos in the state’s election machinery, while renewing the Trump administration’s repeatedly discredited claims of widespread voting by illegal immigrants. The unsealed grand jury subpoenas were sent to the state elections board and to 44 county elections boards in eastern North Carolina. Their existence became widely known after Marc E. Elias, a voting rights lawyer aligned with the Democratic Party, mentioned them on Twitter. Though the nature, scope and impetus of the federal investigation that generated the subpoenas remain shrouded in mystery, the move appeared to be part of an effort to find and crack down on any unauthorized voting by noncitizens. Representatives of ICE and the Justice Department officials involved declined to comment on the matter.

North Carolina: Investigators seek massive North Carolina voting records | Associated Press

Federal investigators in North Carolina are seeking an enormous number of voting records from dozens of election offices weeks before the midterm elections, demands that may signal their expanded efforts to prosecute illegal voting by people who are not U.S. citizens. The U.S. attorney’s office in Raleigh issued subpoenas in recent days on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the North Carolina elections board and more than 40 county boards in the eastern third of the state, according to the subpoenas and the state board. The same federal prosecutor announced two weeks ago that 19 foreign nationals were charged with registering to vote or casting ballots illegally because they weren’t U.S. citizens. More than half were indicted by a grand jury in Wilmington, according to an Aug. 24 news release from U.S. Attorney Bobby Higdon’s office.

North Carolina: Electoral map to be used in midterms despite being ruled unconstitutional | The Hill

A court on Tuesday said there was not enough time to redraw a North Carolina redistricting map that had been ruled unconstitutional last month, meaning the map will still be used in the 2018 midterm elections. “Having carefully reviewed the parties’ briefing and supporting materials, we conclude that there is insufficient time for this Court to approve a new districting plan and for the State to conduct an election using that plan prior to the seating of the new Congress in January 2019,” the court ruling said, according to CNN. t55“And we further find that imposing a new schedule for North Carolina’s congressional elections would, at this late juncture, unduly interfere with the State’s electoral machinery and likely confuse voters and depress turnout,” it added.

North Carolina: Judges say Cooper — not lawmakers — can control certain boards | News & Observer

A three-judge panel has expanded Gov. Roy Cooper’s authority to make certain appointments, the latest step in a separation-of-powers struggle that began when then-Gov. Pat McCrory sued the General Assembly in 2016. Cooper sued in May 2017 challenging the constitutionality of the legislature appointing the majority of members to certain boards and commissions. In some cases the legislature gave itself that authority. In other cases, Cooper argued, the legislature should have changed the membership of some existing boards to reflect rulings by the state Supreme Court. The three state Superior Court judges in a ruling filed Friday noted that the Supreme Court in the lawsuit brought by McCrory said the General Assembly had overstepped its authority.

North Carolina: Gerrymandering Drama Is Only Going to Get Worse | The Atlantic

Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea for Republican state legislators in North Carolina to openly admit that they were drawing partisan gerrymanders. “I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law”—that’s how state Representative David Lewis, the chief GOP official in charge of redistricting, characterized the latest congressional maps. He’d been sent back to the drawing board in 2016 by a federal court, which said the previous maps he’d authorized constituted racial gerrymanders. So Lewis and his team, still seeking to maximize Republican advantage, opted to redraw districts along aggressively partisan lines instead.

North Carolina: Will North Carolina get a new election map before the mid-terms? – A hideous gerrymander | The Economist

When the Supreme Court passed up several opportunities to rein in partisan gerrymandering, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s purported reticence was the main story. Justice Kennedy, now retired, had all but invited these cases in a 2004 decision decrying state legislatures for “rigging elections” and pleading for a “workable” standard to specify when partisan electoral line-drawing goes too far. So on June 18th, when the justices disposed of challenges to gerrymanders in Wisconsin (Gill v Whitford) and Maryland (Benisek v Lamone) on procedural grounds, without discussing the merits, many said the court was delaying a reckoning because Justice Kennedy had lost his will. 

North Carolina: Supreme Court halts ballots amid NAACP lawsuit | News & Observer

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the state’s elections board to halt preparation of voting ballots amid a legal challenge from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The N.C. NAACP challenged the legality of four Constitutional Amendments set for the November election, arguing the ballot language is misleading and the GOP-controlled legislature lacked standing to propose the changes. The state Supreme Court’s move comes a week after a panel of Superior Court judges blocked two of those four proposed amendments from the ballot.

North Carolina: Judges’ Ruling on Election Map Plunges North Carolina Politics Into Disarray | The New York Times

The federal court ruling on Monday declaring that North Carolina’s congressional district map was unfair to Democrats — and might have to be redrawn soon — threw the state’s politics into confusion bordering on chaos. Candidates like Linda Coleman were left struggling to understand what would come next, and how the fast-approaching midterm elections would now be conducted. The court left open a host of possibilities. Ms. Coleman might have to run in a new Democratic primary, in a newly drawn district with voters who do not know her. Or she might find herself in an open, multicandidate election with no primary at all.

North Carolina: Federal Court Throws Out North Carolina’s Congressional Districts, Again | The New York Times

A panel of three federal judges again declared North Carolina’s congressional district map to be unconstitutional, ruling on Monday that it was gerrymandered to unfairly favor Republican candidates. The decision, which may have significant implications for control of Congress after the midterm elections, is likely to be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which for the moment is evenly split on ideological lines without a ninth justice to tip the balance. Though North Carolina’s voters tend to divide about evenly between the two parties, Republicans currently hold 10 of the state’s 13 House seats. A redrawn district map may put more of the seats within Democrats’ reach. The three judges had ruled unanimously in January that the state’s House map violated the First and 14th Amendments by unfairly giving one group of voters — Republicans — a bigger voice than others in choosing representatives.

North Carolina: GOP legislators seek to take power from Democratc governor | The Hill

North Carolina’s General Assembly on Monday will consider changes for two amendments that, if approved by voters in November, would dramatically shift the balance of power away from the governor and to the state legislature. The amendments are part of a battle between the state’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and legislative Republicans, who hold supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. The amendments would allow the legislature to claim more power over appointments to both open judicial seats and the state Board of Elections. At present, Cooper holds the power to appoint judges to vacant seats and to the Board of Elections.

North Carolina: Constitutional amendments: Judges say two proposals have misleading language | News & Observer

A panel of Superior Court judges on Tuesday blocked two North Carolina constitutional amendments from statewide ballots. The order from a three-judge panel said ballots should not be printed that ask voters to make changes in the state constitution on how state boards and commission members are appointed and how judges are selected to fill vacancies. The order said those ballot questions did not fully inform voters of the changes that would result if the measures passed. The court order gives Gov. Roy Cooper a victory, at least temporarily, in his lawsuit against legislative leaders. The order has no real effect since the judges last week ordered that no ballots be printed while the court cases and appeals continue. Attorneys representing Cooper, the state elections board and legislative leaders said at a hearing last week they would appeal the order if their side lost.

North Carolina: Judges skeptical of challenges to proposed amendments | WRAL

A panel of three Superior Court judges on Wednesday ordered state elections officials to hold off printing ballots for the November election until the courts could weigh in on challenges brought by Gov. Roy Cooper to two proposed constitutional amendments. Cooper charges that amendments giving lawmakers the power to fill vacant judgeships between elections and appoint people to dozens of state boards and commissions are worded so poorly on the ballot that they will mislead voters as to their impact. “A ballot question that does not fairly and accurately present [what it does] amounts to a deceit on the people of North Carolina, and it corrodes and, I suggest, it corrupts their right to amend their constitution,” said John Wester, an attorney for Cooper. “This cannot become the law of our state.” The two proposals use “feel-good phrasing” to encourage voters to approve them, Wester said, when state law requires that amendment language be fair and non-discriminatory.

North Carolina: Republican legislators violated a candidate’s constitutional rights, judge rules | News & Observer

A judge threw out a new state law Monday, ruling that it violated the constitutional rights of at least two politicians whose 2018 campaigns the law had targeted. Chris Anglin, a Republican candidate for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, had sued the legislature along with Rebecca Edwards, a Democrat who is running to become a district court judge in Wake County. Earlier this summer, the legislature passed a new law that would have prevented Anglin or Edwards from being able to have their party affiliations on the ballot. They argued that the law unfairly targeted them because their competitors in this November’s elections would still have their own parties listed on the ballot. Anglin, who is believed to have been the main target of the new law, is one of two Republicans running for the Supreme Court seat against a single Democratic candidate.

North Carolina: Judge voids part of North Carolina election law | Associated Press

A federal judge invalidated part of North Carolina elections law that allows one voter to challenge another’s residency, a provision that activist groups used to scrub thousands of names from rolls ahead of the 2016 elections. U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs said in an order signed Wednesday that the residency challenges are pre-empted by the 1993 federal “motor voter” law aimed at expanding voting opportunities. The National Voter Registration Act “encourages the participation of qualified voters in federal elections by mandating certain procedures designed to reduce the risk that a voter’s registration might be erroneously canceled. Defendants’ conduct contravened these procedures,” Biggs wrote.

North Carolina: Roy Cooper sued election board. Instead of fighting, the board’s lawyer took his side | News & Observer

wo constitutional amendments planned for the fall ballot. Rather than fighting Cooper, the state lawyer representing the elections board has jumped in on Cooper’s side. The state Republican Party is calling out state Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, for supporting the Democratic governor’s position on the lawsuit without getting election board members’ approval. “It is highly unusual for an attorney to make a decision of this magnitude without a formal request or vote from his client board,” the state GOP said in a statement. “It is illegal for any member of the board to take a public stance on a ballot question.” In an email, a spokeswoman for Stein said the office is confident it is properly representing the board. “Our office has consulted closely with the State Board about this case and will continue to do so,” spokeswoman Laura Brewer said in an email. “Attorney client privilege prevents me from sharing the substance of those conversations. We are confident our clients are aware of and support the action we are taking in this litigation.”

North Carolina: Russian election threat grows, but GOP wants more scrutiny of North Carolina voters | News & Observer

The motive behind requiring a photo ID to vote has always been thinly veiled. The real intention isn’t to protect the integrity of an election. It’s to discourage voting by people from groups that tend to vote Democratic — African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants and college students, in particular. Now the investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. elections has laid that hypocrisy bare. The U.S. intelligence community agrees that the threat of Russia’s interference is real. Studies show the threat of people impersonating other voters isn’t. Yet North Carolina’s lawmakers are pushing to stop the latter and saying little about the former.

North Carolina: Worried about the security of your vote? New technology may help ease your mind | News & Observer

You’ve researched the candidates and made your decisions. You head to your polling place, fill out your ballot, and put it in the scanner. But as it gets sucked into the machine, what’s happening to it? If you use a touch-screen voting machine, or assistive technology, what happens when you submit your vote and it flies off into the ether? The latest generation of machines offer more assurance that your vote counts. In what is likely to be the largest overhaul of North Carolina’s voting technology in a decade, counties across the state are preparing to comply with a statewide requirement to phase out voting machines that don’t mark a physical paper ballot by Sept. 1, 2019. Lawmakers and activists say those devices, known as direct-recording electronic voting machines, do not produce a sufficient record. The requirement is one of the surviving provisions of North Carolina’s controversial 2013 voter ID law.

North Carolina: Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting. | The New York Times

Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for running a red light. The officer ran a background check and came back with bad news for Mr. Sellars. There was a warrant out for his arrest. As his girls cried in the back seat, Mr. Sellars was handcuffed and taken to jail. His crime: Illegal voting. “I didn’t know,” said Mr. Sellars, who spent the night in jail before his family paid his $2,500 bond. “I thought I was practicing my right.” Mr. Sellars, 44, is one of a dozen people in Alamance County in North Carolina who have been charged with voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election. All were on probation or parole for felony convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.

North Carolina: Judges hear arguments over state elections board for third time | WRAL

For the third time in a little more than a year, a panel of three Superior Court judges was asked Thursday to weigh the legality of a revamped State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. The elections board has been at the center of a power struggle between Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican legislative leaders since before Cooper took office, and each side has claimed victories in the ongoing dispute. Traditionally, the five-member elections board was controlled by the party of the governor, but after Cooper defeated Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in 2016, lawmakers merged the board with the eight-member Ethics Commission and said the new panel would be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.