North Carolina: Falsified write-in votes alleged in Bladen County | News & Observer

A protest has been filed in Bladen County alleging that a handful of people may have improperly submitted hundreds of absentee ballots, while also getting paid for get-out-the-vote efforts by a community group funded by the N.C. Democratic Party. According to the protest filed by McCrae Dowless, who won election as soil and water district supervisor, the handwriting on a number of ballots and the signatures of some mail-in absentee witnesses were similar. He said the questioned ballots seem to have been cast in favor of a straight ticket of candidates and also to vote for a man named Franklin Graham, who ran a write-in campaign for soil and water district supervisor. A letter the Bladen County elections board wrote to the State Board of Elections, and attached to the complaint, raises the same concerns. While some ballots listed witnesses, few include the documentation that would be required if someone had also assisted the voters, according to the letter.

North Carolina: Could legislators decide governor race? ‘Last resort,’ House speaker says | News & Observer

House Speaker Tim Moore said in a podcast interview posted Tuesday it would be unlikely that the General Assembly would attempt to determine the outcome of the close contest between Gov. Pat McCrory and Attorney General Roy Cooper. “It is an absolute last resort for the General Assembly to be involved,” Moore, a Kings Mountain Republican, said in the interview on “What Matters in North Carolina,” a podcast on the Freedom Action Network website. There has been speculation that the computer problems that delayed counting some of the votes in Durham County on Election Day could set the stage for legislative intervention. State law allows the General Assembly to decide contested elections for the 10 Council of State offices, which includes the governor, and also for legislators. The provision has only been used once before in modern history, when lawmakers named June Atkinson state superintendent of public instruction over Bill Fletcher in 2005, in a process that took nine months to resolve. At the time, the legislature was controlled by Democrats; Atkinson was a Democrat and Fletcher was a Republican.

North Carolina: Durham County defends handling of 90K ballots in governor’s race | Associated Press

North Carolina’s top criminal investigations agency is looking into whether there was wrongdoing in last spring’s primary election in Durham County, the likely ground zero in the ongoing fight over last week’s still-in-doubt race for governor. A State Bureau of Investigation spokesman and Durham’s district attorney confirmed Monday that investigators have been on the case for two weeks. The bureau is investigating whether crimes were committed in the mishandling of more than 1,000 provisional ballots during the March primary elections. Some may have been counted twice and election officials presented the vote count as true when it was wrong, according to an interim report presented to the state elections board in May. The miscount didn’t affect the primary’s outcome. The state board’s completed investigation was turned over to Durham District Attorney Roger Echols, who brought in state investigators Oct. 31, bureau spokesman Shannon O’Toole said.

North Carolina: Gov. Pat McCrory claims voter irregularities in election | News & Observer

Gov. Pat McCrory, trailing in a close race for re-election behind Attorney General Roy Cooper, claims there was “malfeasance” in tabulating votes in Durham County and “irregularities” reported around the state. Cooper’s campaign said nothing improper happened in Durham, and accused McCrory of trying to undermine the election. A formal protest filed Saturday with the Durham County Board of Elections calls for a recount of disputed votes there. About 90,000 votes weren’t counted until late on Election Day. Durham officials said it was due to malfunctioning equipment that led to a backlog, and that it had no impact on the votes cast. The protest was filed by Thomas Stark, who is the general counsel for the N.C. GOP, and announced by McCrory’s campaign. McCrory’s campaign staff said on Saturday that those ballots came from at least five early voting sites and one general election site in Durham County and appear to have been tabulated from corrupted memory cards. The cards could not be properly read by the system and the computers “experienced a critical error,” according to the campaign.

North Carolina: The governor’s race still isn’t over. And it’s about to get even uglier. | The Washington Post

One of the most hotly contested races of 2016 is still being contested. And the North Carolina governor’s race could drag on past Thanksgiving in an ugly way: The Democrat is declaring victory but the Republican incumbent is refusing to concede, and his campaign is raising the possibility of voter fraud. There could even be a recount. Cooper declared victory early Wednesday with a 5,000-vote lead over McCrory out of 4.6 million votes cast. That’s a 0.5 percentage point lead, and it’s small enough that McCrory isn’t willing to concede until thousands of provisional, absentee and military ballots are counted and the election results certified by state election officials. In fact, on Thursday afternoon, McCrory’s campaign announced they hired a lawyer and set up a legal defense fund in preparation to contest the results.

North Carolina: Provisional ballots could decide North Carolina governor’s race | Associated Press

Tens of thousands of uncounted provisional ballots could decide North Carolina’s governor’s race, some which wouldn’t have been counted if the courts had upheld a Republican-backed law that limited voting access. With nearly 4.7 million ballots cast, GOP Gov. Pat McCrory trailed Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper by about 5,000 votes — even though Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr and Donald Trump secured victories by comfortable margins. McCrory was dogged throughout the campaign by his support for a law limiting LGBT rights — a prime example, according to Democrats, of the state’s rightward shift under his watch. Cooper had declared victory, though the race remained too close to call Wednesday. County boards are supposed to decide in the next several days which mailed absentee ballots and provisional votes cast during early voting or on Election Day should be added to the race totals. The trailing candidate could then ask for a recount.

North Carolina: With broken voting machines, a North Carolina city is doing ‘everything by hand’ | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Technology to check in voters was not working working properly in Durham, North Carolina, this morning, forcing elections officials to handle check-in by hand. This is just one of a handful of areas with machines or technology breaking down, and problems have been reported in Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina, too, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Verified Voting Foundation. At this early point, the problems should not interfere with the ability to get accurate vote counts, authorities said. “We have a high degree of confidence that the ballots will be able to be counted” by the end of the day, Verified Voting president Pamela Smith told cleveland.com during a conference call with reporters and a coalition of voting rights groups.

North Carolina: Lawsuit filed to extend Durham voting hours after computer glitch | News & Observer

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Democracy North Carolina for emergency action to keep Durham polls open until 9 p.m. A hearing on the lawsuit is expected shortly before Wake County Superior Court Judge Don Stephens. The filing comes after software glitches in Durham have prompted the county Board of Elections to ask the state for permission to extend voting hours by 90 minutes Tuesday evening. Durham County Board of Elections Chair Bill Brian said the county took its electronic voting system offline after problems popped up at several precincts. Poll workers were unable to look up voter registration information digitally, so they turned to paper records. That requires the use of paper forms, and when some precincts ran out of the forms, voting ground to a halt.

North Carolina: US judge tells North Carolina counties to restore purged voter names to polls | McClatchy DC

A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Friday that four counties must restore names to voter rolls that were part of a recent mass purge. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs came in response to a lawsuit filed Monday by the state NAACP. In the lawsuit, seeking an emergency halt to voter roll purges in Beaufort, Moore and Cumberland counties, NAACP representatives and several voters affected described the practice as an effort to suppress the African-American vote. At issue was whether the North Carolina law that allows individual voters in this state to challenge anyone’s registration violates the National Voter Registration Act, which “prohibits the mass removal of voters from the rolls within the 90 days prior to the election.” The organization also contends that county election boards did not follow proper notification or hearing procedures for the challenges. “[T]here is little question that the County Boards’ process of allowing third parties to challenge hundreds and, in Cumberland County, thousands of voters within 90 days before the 2016 General Election constitutes the type of ‘systematic’ removal prohibited by the [National Voter Registration Act],” Biggs wrote in her ruling.

North Carolina: Emails show how Republicans lobbied to limit voting hours in North Carolina | Reuters

When Bill McAnulty, an elections board chairman in a mostly white North Carolina county, agreed in July to open a Sunday voting site where black church members could cast ballots after services, the reaction was swift: he was labeled a traitor by his fellow Republicans. “I became a villain, quite frankly,” recalled McAnulty at a state board of elections meeting in September that had been called to resolve disputes over early voting plans. “I got accused of being a traitor and everything else by the Republican Party,” McAnulty said. Following the blowback from Republicans, McAnulty later withdrew his support for the Sunday site.

North Carolina: Voter challenge process seems “insane,” judge says | CBS

North Carolina’s process for challenging voters’ registration seems to harken to a bygone era when fewer safeguards were in place, a federal judge said Wednesday as she presided over a lawsuit that alleges voters are being purged unfairly. Lawyers for North Carolina countered that state data shows only a sliver of names have been removed from county rolls in the past two years – fewer than 7,000 statewide out of 6.8 million registered voters. The comments came during an emergency hearing over NAACP allegations that at least three counties purged voter rolls through a process disproportionately targeting blacks. Early voting is already underway in the critical swing state that the NAACP has previously sued over other voter access issues. So far, North Carolina’s black voter turnout has lagged the 2012 presidential election.

North Carolina: NAACP Sues North Carolina Over Alleged Voter Purge Targeting Black Voters | TPM

The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, along with a handful of individual voters, sued the state’s elections board and three county elections boards Monday over an alleged voter purge that it claims disproportionately affected African Americans. Some 4,500 voters’ ability to vote is in limbo, the complaint alleges, due to the efforts by a few individuals to challenge their registrations. The NAACP-NC accused state and local officials of violating the National Voter Registration Act and the federal Voting Rights Act in their handling of the challenged voters. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. “The Tar Heel state is ground zero in the intentional, surgical efforts by Republicans to suppress the voice of voters,” NAACP-NC President Rev. William Barber II said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “The NAACP is defending rights of all North Carolinians to participate in this election. We’re taking this emergency step to make sure not a single voters’ voice is unlawfully taken away. This is our Selma and we will not back down and allow this suppression to continue.”

North Carolina: Critics say these efforts constitute ballot box discrimination | The Boston Globe

In the first week of early voting in North Carolina this month, the number of people who showed up to cast in-person ballots in Guilford County fell off a cliff. Voters cast 52,562 fewer ballots, a decrease of 87 percent from the same weeklong period four years earlier, according to an analysis by Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C. The difference? In 2012, the county — where more than a third of the 517,000 residents are African-American and which gave President Obama 58 percent of the vote in 2012 — had 16 locations open for the first stretch of in-person early voting. This year, the Republican-controlled election board opened only one polling site for the first week of early voting — and the site was open two fewer days that first week. Civil rights advocates say what happened in Guilford County, the home of Greensboro, is part of a nationwide proliferation of largely Republican-led efforts, large and small, that discriminate against African-Americans, Latinos, and others at the ballot box. Measures that make voting more difficult — new voter ID laws; rules that make it harder to register; and cuts in the number and hours of polling places — have popped up throughout the country, including in some areas with a history of disenfranchisement.

North Carolina: A Battle Over Voter Suppression In North Carolina | US News

The North Carolina NAACP is preparing to take legal action against the state Board of Elections for suppressing voter registration. Just months after the NAACP won a three-year legal battle against a North Carolina voter identification guide, NAACP President William Barber II said Friday that the state Board of Elections was in violation of the 1993 National Voter Registration act as thousands of black citizens in this battleground state were having their voting registration challenged in court. “Voting fraud is a distraction: statistically and legally nonexistent,” Barber said. “It is in fact voter suppression that is the real threat in this election.” Dozens of delegates at NAACP state convention surrounded Barber as he spoke in front of the North Carolina Governor’s mansion, bearing signs that read, “Vote because black lives are on the ballot” or “vote because education is on the ballot,” and chanting “Yes!” or “amen” as he spoke.

North Carolina: Are there voting-fraud risks? Sure, but the chances of widespread rigging are low | News & Observer

Despite fears of Election Day mayhem, the 2016 presidential race is likely to be the most secure in years, according to experts. That’s because the way America casts and counts its vote is increasingly driven by newer and more reliable technology, they say. “I don’t think we’d be here if we did believe it was rigged,” Amy Muffo, a software development manager from Raleigh, North Carolina, said while waiting in line Thursday to vote early at the Optimist Community Center in suburban Raleigh. So why are others worried? Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has stoked concern with doomsday predictions of election chaos that experts warn are exaggerated. Although the Nov. 8 election is national, it is operated at the state and local level, under differing rules in all 50 states. Forty-one states are generally viewed by experts as relatively risk-free, because they deploy optical-scan technology that scans paper ballots or they have printouts of electronic ballots cast as a backup. It’s the remaining nine states that have generated concern and left room for the perception of manipulation. The vulnerabilities – and how serious they are – differ depending on the state and even the precinct.

North Carolina: Complaint spurs voter machine recalibration | Times News

The Alamance County Board of Elections will recalibrate the voting machines at the Graham early voting site after a second-hand, anonymous complaint. A man claiming to be a concerned citizen called the Times-News and said that when a friend of his attempted to vote for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, it selected Republican candidate Donald Trump. The information was left in a voicemail with no return phone number or name of the individuals involved. Alamance County Board of Elections Director Kathy Holland said she received a similar phone call from one of the local political parties about a man claiming the machine had selected a different presidential candidate from the one he was attempting to select. No one, she stressed, has complained while voting. She said they would recalibrate the machines after voting ended Monday evening at the Youth Services Building.

North Carolina: Federal courts reject challenge brought by Clinton campaign counsel to early voting plans in 5 North Carolina counties | The Charlotte Observer

A federal appeals court panel has rejected a request by a group of North Carolina voters for modifications to early-voting plans in Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Nash and New Hanover counties. Early voting starts Thursday in North Carolina. Marc Elias — a Washington, D.C.-based attorney involved in several high-profile voting rights cases and counsel to Hillary Clinton’s campaign — represented a group of voters who filed their request in early October, less than three weeks before early voting was to start.

North Carolina: Drawing the line on the most gerrymandered district in America | The Guardian

On the outskirts of Charlotte, it’s the last day of early voting for the congressional race in North Carolina’s 12th district at the Mountain Island library, and there are no lines for the polling stations. Instead, volunteers outnumbered the voters. It was early voting time, but not for a race nearly as high-profile as the presidential election. Only 266 people turned out in June to the polls to pick the district’s next member of Congress. After the election, once all the votes were tallied, only 7% of more than 500,000 registered voters cast ballots. “Turnout was very, very low,” said Carol Johnson, a poll worker and an employee for the city of Charlotte. “Maybe people didn’t know. Maybe they weren’t interested.” Or maybe people have grown disenfranchised after living in what has long been considered the most gerrymandered district in the United States. Twenty-five years ago, North Carolina lawmakers drew the 12th district, creating the second majority-minority district in a state with a dark history of denying black residents their voting rights. That line-drawing is what is known as gerrymandering, or manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts to favor a particular result.

North Carolina: Democrats win extension of voter registration deadline | Reuters

A state judge in North Carolina gave residents in counties hit hard by Hurricane Matthew five extra days to register to vote after Democrats sued to get an extension to Friday’s deadline, while a federal judge ordered an extension in one Georgia county. The Democratic Party in North Carolina challenged the state election board’s refusal to extend the cutoff date, saying in its suit that thousands of people would have been deprived of their fundamental right to vote in the Nov. 8 election if Friday’s deadline was not extended by at least five days. The judge ordered an extension to next Wednesday in 36 counties, a lawyer for the state Democratic Party said on Twitter. “This ruling will ensure that those communities who have suffered from the devastating flooding brought on by Hurricane Matthew have the grace period that they need in order to exercise their right to vote and make their voices heard in this critical election,” party officials said.

North Carolina: No extension for voter registration after Hurricane Matthew | News & Observer

The state will keep Friday as the deadline for regular voter registration, the State Board of Elections announced Wednesday, despite the upheaval in eastern counties awash in floodwater. Common Cause NC this week asked the elections board to extend the regular registration deadline to Oct. 19. On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Democrat representing counties hit by flooding after Hurricane Matthew, asked the state elections board to reconsider extending the deadline. “It would be a travesty to look at the dire situation that is being endured by people in these communities who are fighting against unparalleled flooding and not grant them additional days so that they can register to vote and exercise their fundamental right in November,” Butterfield said in a statement.

North Carolina: Governor and legislators argue against allegations early voting plans in 5 counties violate court order | News & Observer

Attorneys for Gov. Pat McCrory and N.C. legislators contended in a document filed in federal court on Friday that early voting plans in five counties do not run afoul of a federal appeals court ruling. The response came six days after a group of voters represented by Hillary Clinton’s campaign counsel sought emergency intervention. The voters are represented by Marc Elias, a Washington-based attorney who, in addition to working on Clinton’s campaign, has been involved with a number of high-profile cases challenging voting rights restrictions in recent years. They asked a judge to require the state Board of Elections to modify early voting plans in Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Nash and New Hanover counties. But attorneys for the state argued that the counties – four of which leaned Democratic in the 2012 elections – were within the bounds of a ruling this summer by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that invalidated much of a 2013 elections law overhaul.

North Carolina: A federal court struck down much of North Carolina’s voter ID law – but what’s left could still shrink the black vote | The Washington Post

Many voting rights activists breathed a sigh of relief this year when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit overturned numerous provisions of North Carolina’s 2013 election law. The law had instituted a strict voter ID requirement, curtailed the early voting period and eliminated one-stop voting and registration, among other provisions. Critics argued that if the law were fully implemented it would lead to a sharp reduction in voting by racial minorities and younger citizens. The 4th Circuit agreed, saying that the “new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” On emergency appeal, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4 to 4 on granting a stay, which meant that the 4th Circuit’s decision will stand for the 2016 election. But there is an overlooked yet consequential provision of the law that the court did not strike down: the removal of the straight-ticket option from North Carolina ballots. As in 2014, there will be no such option on the ballot in 2016.

North Carolina: Voter suppression’s last stand: North Carolina’s new Jim Crow counties | InsightUS

In the wake of a federal court decision overturning North Carolina’s “monster voter suppression law,” the NC-GOP’s executive director issued a call for “party-line changes to early voting” by the state’s Republican-controlled county boards of elections. Our review of the state’s early voting plan for this year finds that many boards did just the opposite. Still, a defiant band of renegades – the state’s New Jim Crow counties – did answer that call with cuts disproportionately falling on minority voters and promising election day chaos. But voting rights advocates are fighting back. The Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision overturned a key protection of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), instantly transforming North Carolina into the epicenter of the nationwide battle over minority voting rights. Within weeks of that decision (which freed the state from VRA’s requirement for federal oversight of changes to its election practices) North Carolina’s Republican-controlled General Assembly passed, and Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law, the state’s “monster voter suppression bill,” HB589. The law slashed early voting days, imposed a cumbersome voter ID requirement, and ended voter registration during the early voting period, among many other restrictions.

North Carolina: No more straight-ticket option in voting booths this November | WLOS

After a federal judge struck down much of North Carolina’s controversial voter ID law back in July, one provision remained, and it might have the most powerful effect on this November’s election–especially in local races all over the state. The 2013 law eliminated straight-ticket voting, meaning that in the November election, for the first time, you’ll no longer be able to fill out one bubble to vote all-Democrat, or all-Republican. Technically, you’ve always had to fill out two bubbles in North Carolina, since the vote for president has required a separate vote since the 1960s. This provision might lower vote totals, and make for tighter local races on November 8.

North Carolina: Motion Seeks to Modify Early Voting Ruling in North Carolina | Associated Press

An emergency motion was filed Saturday asking a federal judge to require the N.C. State Board of Elections to comply with a previous decision addressing early voting in North Carolina. The motion filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of a group called “The Duke Intervenor Plaintiffs” seeks to get the board to modify the early voting plans of Nash, New Hanover, Mecklenburg, Guilford and Forsyth counties. According to the motion, the board recently approved early voting plans that the plaintiffs think run counter to the decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Also, the motion says if the court finds it necessary to issue an order of contempt, the plaintiffs would move for an order to show why the board shouldn’t be held in civil contempt for violating the court’s order.

North Carolina: Democrats seek more early voting hours in key North Carolina counties | The Hill

Attorneys behind the lawsuit that struck down a sweeping North Carolina election reform measure filed an emergency motion on Saturday to extend early voting hours in five key counties. The new motion, filed by Marc Elias, the top lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, seeks to extend early voting hours in Nash, New Hanover, Mecklenburg, Guilford and Forsyth counties. President Obama won four of those five counties in 2012. The motion comes after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that a 2013 state election reform law disproportionately impacted low-income and minority voters. The three-judge panel that struck down the law said it had been enacted by the legislature with intent to discriminate against voters who typically back Democrats.

North Carolina: Plaintiffs in voting rights case target early voting restrictions | Politico

A group of plaintiffs in a voting rights case that rocked North Carolina politics earlier this year filed a further court motion on Saturday to peel back remaining restrictions on early voting times and locations in five counties, a person with knowledge of the move told POLITICO. Filed in the battleground state’s Middle District, the motion seeks to build on wide-reaching victories won by voting rights activists — and cheered by Democrats — earlier this summer when the Fourth Circuit court ruled that the 2013 rules adopted by North Carolina’s Republican-heavy legislature purposely sought to limit the influence of African-American voters there. The suit is led by Marc Elias, the Washington attorney who — in addition to working on high-profile voting rights cases across the country — is Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer.

North Carolina: Court bars college dorm students from voting in Greenville County, director says | Greenville Online

If a college student who lives on campus at Clemson University wants to register to vote in Pickens County, they can just fill out a voter registration form and list their campus housing as their legal residence. Same with students at the University of South Carolina or the College of Charleston or any number of colleges in South Carolina. But not in Greenville County. If a college student who lives on campus at Furman University or Greenville Technical College or Bob Jones University or North Greenville University wants to register to vote in Greenville County, they’re more than likely out of luck. That’s because those students must complete an 11-question form with answers that satisfy the county’s Board of Voter Registration and Elections. If they don’t return the form within 10 days, the board will reject their registration. If they don’t answer every question correctly with enough information to establish their residence in Greenville, the board will reject their registration.

North Carolina: State Supreme Court political and ideological balance could tilt in 2016 election | News & Observer

As key pieces of the legislative agenda get scrutiny in the courts, partisan organizations and politicians are focusing on the race for the one seat up for grabs on the North Carolina Supreme Court. The state’s highest court has a one-vote conservative majority, and that has been reflected in decisions to uphold redistricting maps found unconstitutional in the federal courts and to allow state funds to be used for private school vouchers. Justice Bob Edmunds, who has been on the state’s highest court for 16 years, is a Republican from Greensboro facing a challenge from Wake County Superior Court Judge Mike Morgan, a Democrat from Raleigh. Early voting begins in North Carolina on Oct. 20 and ends Nov. 5. Election day is Nov. 8. The candidates have been going from the coast to the mountains, speaking to individuals and groups. It was not until May that it became clear Edmunds would face any challengers in his campaign to keep his seat.

North Carolina: Why early voting matters | Facing South

An “overall victory” is what voting rights advocates are calling North Carolina counties’ new early voting plans. They were finalized last week following the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s July ruling, which a divided U.S. Supreme Court let stand, striking down the battleground state’s so-called “monster” election law that among other things slashed a week from the 17-day early voting period. In a 12-hour meeting on Sept. 8, the N.C. State Board of Elections resolved contested early voting plans from 33 of the state’s 100 county election boards, all of which are controlled by Republicans. (Under North Carolina law, the governor’s party holds two of every county election boards’ three seats.) Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state Republican Party, had urged county board members to limit early voting and keep polling sites closed on Sundays — what he called “party line changes.”