Voting rights advocacy groups warned last week that a North Carolina House bill proposing extensive changes to state election laws is “harmful” to voting rights.
Representatives from Common Cause North Carolina, Democracy North Carolina, Forward Justice, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, and North Carolina Black Alliance gathered outside the state Legislative Building at the hour state lawmakers inside were expected to vote on House Bill 958
Republican lawmakers who authored the bill said Tuesday that it was intended to improve the “integrity” of the election process. But Kathleen Roblez, senior voting rights counsel at Forward Justice, highlighted a provision of the bill that would prohibit state and local election board members from “encouraging or promoting voter turnout in any election.”
“This is like saying you own a restaurant, but you cannot go online and say, ‘Please come eat dinner today.’” Roblez said. “This is saying a state or county board election member cannot say ‘Today’s election day, register to vote, voting is good.’ That’s their job. This is a First Amendment violation, plain and simple.”
Roblez also expressed concerns that the bill’s proposal to require military and overseas voters to provide documentation showing their most recent North Carolina address along with their registration applications would result in fewer people voting overseas.
“It’s important now, as always, to remember that if your vote wasn’t so important, they wouldn’t be working so hard to take it away from you,” Roblez said.
The bill would also require overseas and military voters to submit photo identification with their ballots, codifying a state Supreme Court decision in Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s unsuccessful attempt to throw out ballots in his 2024 race for a Supreme Court seat.
The influence of the Supreme Court decision in Griffin’s case appears in the bill a second time in the bill’s move to make overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina but vote in the state because their parents last lived here ineligible to vote in state or local elections. These voters are referred to as “never residents” in Griffin’s lawsuit.
Other key changes of H958 include:
North Carolina Black Alliance Executive Director Marcus Bass said the bill’s provisions, taken together, will disproportionately affect younger, poorer and minority voters.
“We are here to make sure that the individuals behind us don’t just operate in the cover of darkness or in the confines of this concrete building,” Bass said, “but that their actions are met by voters in the district, by individuals that they’re elected to serve, and by the citizens who deserve free and fair elections.”
The state House Elections Committee approved the bill Tuesday along party lines. Republican bill sponsors had planned to fast-track it through another committee and onto the state House floor as quickly as possible. However, they delayed the bill after dozens of protesters crowded into legislative meeting rooms and hallways Tuesday. It did not resurface for debate Wednesday. House leaders say they’re continuing to work on it.
During Wednesday’s press conference, advocates also expressed concerns over the rollback of early voting sites in various counties, including a decision last week in Wake County to relocate a site from NC State University’s student center to a building at the edge of campus, as well as a decision by Granville County election officials to relocate two early voting sites out of Oxford and Creedmoor, where the majority of the county’s Democrats live, into rural areas of the county that are more heavily Republican.
“It is targeted to Black voters, but the fringes are also cutting a wider gap in democracy than I think that they’re anticipating,” Bass said. “Everybody should be upset about what’s happening.”