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: ‘Fat-finger mistake’: State, county elections officials tussle over Wilson County sheriff’s race | Will Doran/WRAL

State elections officials voted to allow Bobby Knight to run for Wilson sheriff after his candidacy was challenged by competitors in the upcoming GOP primary. Party affiliation was at the center of the case. Knight has been a registered Republican for years — except for about five hours on the morning of Dec. 1, 2025, when he was a Democrat. An errant tap on his phone while updating his voter registration address accidentally changed his affiliation, he said. State law says someone must be a member of a political party for at least 90 days to run for election as a member of that party. And due to the flub, he didn’t meet that requirement, county officials determined. But the state elections board overruled the county in a 3-2 party-line vote, with the state election board’s Republican majority in favor and the Democratic minority opposed. The decision means Knight will be allowed to run in the Republican Party primary. 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

North Carolina Launches Voter Roll Program That Could Disenfranchise Tens of Thousands | Jen Rice/Democracy Docket

North Carolina formally launched a project Thursday that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, despite pushback from national Democrats. The plan, conceived by a former top GOP legislative aide, would create a two-tiered system for some voters with missing information — allowing them to vote in federal elections, where legal protections for voters are stronger, but not in state and local contests. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued North Carolina last month, alleging that the state failed to collect information from voters required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). In response, the North Carolina State Board of Elections released a plan that requires voters with missing information to vote a provisional ballot unless they respond to mail notifications by providing the additional information. Read Article

North Carolina county elections boards shift from Democratic to GOP control | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

North Carolina’s elections shakeup extended to all 100 counties Tuesday as local boards flipped from Democratic to GOP control and State Auditor Dave Boliek appointed Republican chairs to lead them. The changes expand GOP control of elections to the local level. Last month, Boliek appointed a Republican majority state elections board under a new law that took appointment power away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. Stein has sued over the law, but state appellate courts have allowed it to go into effect. Historically, the governor’s party has held majorities on the state and county boards. Local boards of election are the on-the-ground decision makers that pick polling locations, set early voting schedules and hours, and decide whether provisional ballots should be accepted. Read Article

North Carolina: Changing of the guard. New and outgoing elections directors offer opposing perspectives. | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Some might say newly appointed State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes wrote his own job into law. As general counsel for the Speaker of the House, Hayes had a hand in writing Senate Bill 382, the Tropical Storm Helene relief bill that also shifted election appointment power from the Democratic governor to the newly elected Republican state auditor. As a result, the State Board of Elections got a new Republican majority that then chose a new executive director. After a state court allowed the law to go into effect, the board chose Hayes, a Republican attorney whose election experience includes defending North Carolina’s voter ID law, legislators’ redistricting plans and most recently, Senate Bill 382. “So I worked on the legislation, I’ve defended the legislation, and now I’m here,” Hayes said in a recent interview. Read Article

North Carolina’s high court says elections board shift can continue while appeals carry on | Gary D. Robertson/Associated Press

A divided North Carolina Supreme Court confirmed Friday that it was OK for a new law that shifted the power to appoint State Board of Elections members away from the Democratic governor to start being enforced earlier this month, even as the law’s constitutionality is deliberated. The Republican majority on the court declined or dismissed requests that Gov. Josh Stein made three weeks ago to block for now the enforcement of the law approved last year by the GOP-controlled General Assembly shifting authority to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. In late April, some trial judges hearing Stein’s lawsuit declared the law unconstitutional and said the law couldn’t be carried out. Read Article

North Carolina: Trump DOJ sues over election claims similar to Jefferson Griffin lawsuit | Will Doran/WRAL

North Carolina has failed to comply with federal law requiring accurate voter lists and isn’t doing enough to fix those deficiencies, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday against the North Carolina State Board of Elections. The lawsuit, filed by the administration of Republican President Donald Trump, says the state should’ve done more to verify the identity of voters in the state to ensure no fraud is occurring. It specifically homes in on thousands of people from whom the state’s database of registered voters doesn’t include a driver’s license number or Social Security number. Many of the DOJ’s demands are already underway, due to previous lawsuits over those voters with missing information, but the lawsuit says the state’s efforts to fix the problems haven’t been robust enough. It seeks to enforce a 30-day deadline for the state to contact all the voters in question and either get their information or remove them from the list of registered voters. Read Article

North Carolina: Foregone conclusion. Legal struggle over elections appointment power essentially ends with court ruling. | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Technically, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s lawsuit against Republican leaders over the transfer of his election appointment power to the state auditor could go on for a number of months. But practically, it’s over. Friday evening, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the North Carolina Court of Appeals did not break any rules by allowing the power shift to go into effect on May 1, when a new State Board of Elections was appointed by Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. While the court did not technically rule on the state constitutional questions at play — does the power shift violate separation of powers or the governor’s duty to faithfully execute the law? — it clearly signaled its approval of the power shift in a 5-2 decision. Read Article

After North Carolina Supreme Court Win, Democrats Lose Control of Board That Sets Voting Rules | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Last week, North Carolina Democrats scored a victory when Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin, who’d lost a tight race for the state’s Supreme Court, finally conceded defeat after a six-month legal battle to throw out ballots that he contended were illegitimate. But that same morning, the party suffered a setback that may be more consequential: losing control of the state board that sets voting rules and adjudicates election disputes. The board oversees virtually every aspect of state elections, large and small, from setting rules dictating what makes ballots valid or invalid to monitoring compliance with campaign finance laws. In the Supreme Court race, it consistently worked to block Griffin’s challenges. Read Article

North Carolina: Will a disputed Supreme Court race push defeated candidates to contest results? | Sam Levine/The Guardian

A disputed North Carolina state supreme court race that took nearly six months to resolve revealed a playbook for future candidates who lose elections to retroactively challenge votes, observers warn, but its ultimate resolution sent a signal that federal courts are unlikely to support an effort to overturn the results of an election. Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes last November out of about 5.5m cast. But for months afterwards, Griffin waged an aggressive legal fight to get 65,000 votes thrown out after the election, even though those voters followed all of the rules election officials had set in advance. The effort was largely seen as a long shot until the North Carolina court of appeals accepted the challenge and said more than 60,000 voters had to prove their eligibility, months after the election, or have their votes thrown out. The Republican-controlled North Carolina supreme court significantly narrowed the number of people who had to prove their eligibility, but still left the door open to more than 1,000 votes being tossed. Read Article

North Carolina: New Republican majority on elections board replaces the executive director | Lynn Booner/NC Newsline

The new Republican majority on the state Board of Elections in its first meeting voted to replace elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell with Sam Hayes, general counsel to House Speaker Destin Hall. This is the first state elections board with members appointed by the state Auditor. In the past, a majority of the election board’s members were of the same political party as the governor. After Democrat Josh Stein won the governorship last year, the Republican legislative supermajority passed a law stripping governors of their power to appoint members. That lead to the new majority-Republican elections board. Read Article

North Carolina: Republican concedes long-unsettled Supreme Court election to Democratic incumbent | Gary D. Robertson/Associated Press

The Republican challenger for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat conceded last November’s election on Wednesday to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, two days after a federal judge ruled that potentially thousands of disputed ballots challenged by Jefferson Griffin must remain in the final tally. In a statement provided by his campaign, Griffin said he would not appeal Monday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who also ordered that the State Board of Elections certify results that after two previous recounts showed Riggs is the winner by 734 votes from over 5.5 million ballots cast in the race. Griffin’s decision sets the stage for Riggs to be officially elected to an eight-year term as an associate justice in the nation’s ninth-largest state. Read Article

North Carolina: Court of Appeals clears path for Republicans to take over Board of Elections. Stein to appeal | Will Doran/WRAL

Control over elections administration in North Carolina could flip from Democratic to Republican control within hours, following a decision late Wednesday from the state Court of Appeals. Elections decisions in North Carolina are made by political appointees, who make calls on issues such as where and when to open early voting sites, which allegations of campaign finance violations or voter fraud to refer to prosecutors, and whether to confirm election results. Last week, a trial court ruled that Republican state lawmakers violated the constitution when they tried taking control of the elections board away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. Read Article

North Carolina: Griffin’s case could open an ‘Pandora’s Box’ for election law | Ned Barnett/Raleigh News & Observer

The legal effort to overturn the results of North Carolina’s 2024 state Supreme Court race is an affront to all of the state’s voters, but it potentially also could provide a blueprint for overturning election results in other states. At issue is a lawsuit by Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who lost his bid to unseat Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes out of 5,540,090 votes cast. Griffin asked that more than 65,000 votes be tossed because of flaws in the voters’ registration, the lack of photo ID on military and overseas absentee ballots and a lack of state residency by some voters. The Griffin lawsuit has ping-ponged between state and federal courts for nearly six months and is currently pending in federal court. Ultimately, this case could endure all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the 6-3 Republican majority might uphold Griffin’s attempt to change the rules that govern an election after the election. Read Article

North Carolina judges block GOP law to strip governor’s election board powers | Gary D. Robertson and Makiya Seminera/Associated Press

North Carolina trial judges threw out on Wednesday another Republican attempt to strip the governor of his authority to appoint State Board of Elections members, declaring that a law shifting the task to the state auditor is unconstitutional. One registered Republican judge and one Democratic judge on the three-member panel sided with Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who with his predecessor Roy Cooper sued over the law finalized by the GOP-dominated General Assembly in December. The third judge, a Republican, dissented. The governor picks the five board members, three of whom are traditionally members of the governor’s party. Appointments are made from candidates provided by the two major political parties. Read Article

North Carolina What to Know About the Legal Battle Over a State Supreme Court Race | Eduardo Medina and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

In North Carolina, the Republican candidate for a State Supreme Court seat has refused to concede to the Democratic incumbent, even though two recounts by a state elections board confirmed that he lost the November election by a few hundred votes. The Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, who currently sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, has instead embarked on an extraordinary monthslong effort to toss out scores of ballots. The race is the last in the nation to be uncertified. Judge Griffin’s challenge has ping-ponged through federal and state courts. Most recently, the Democratic incumbent, Justice Allison Riggs, asked a federal court to overturn a State Supreme Court decision that could lead to thousands of military and overseas ballots being tossed. Read Article