North Carolina is once again expected to be a swing state in the race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, with angry political divisions at the forefront of the national debate just four months before the November general election.
But my own State Board of Elections has provided a welcome breath of fresh air, and its encouraging findings should help ease some of the tension, at least for those of us here in the Old North State.
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Who says Republicans, Democrats, Independents, progressives, conservatives, moderates, and people from all walks of life can't work together? It can happen.
The Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections is conducting a thorough study of how our state's elections are run. It is a project of the North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe and Secure Elections, in partnership with Catawba College in Salisbury and the international Carter Center, headquartered in Atlanta.
At a time when the two major parties accuse each other of undermining democracy, our group is committed to finding common ground on elections to strengthen democracy locally and set an example for other states. Election officials, professors, local and statewide politicians, nonprofit leaders and others formed 11 task forces to look at everything from mail-in voting to early voting, ballot security, and voter access and registration.
After the shooting at the Trump rally
The committee chairs presented our draft findings on Monday at the very impressive and ecologically advanced Center for the Environment on the campus of Catawba College in Salisbury. The meeting was scheduled two days after Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet during an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. This incident was a stark reminder to me that we must come together as a country or we will fall apart, and it added a sense of urgency to our committee's work, leaving one attendee dead and two injured.
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Chris Cooper, a professor of political science and public policy at Western Carolina University and author of the upcoming book “The Anatomy of a Purple State,” summed it up in a speech on Monday.
“This has worked really surprisingly well,” he said. “And the reason I really think so is because I have no idea about the party affiliation of at least the people on the committee that I was on. If they asked me to guess the party IDs of these people, I wouldn't do a very good job.”
I can say the same.
Consensus: It's OK in North Carolina
Concluding the draft bill is months of work and won't be completed until early next year. Any recommendations we make will be advisory. State legislators decide our election laws, and state and local election boards make decisions about how to enforce those laws.
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The committee's consensus seemed to be that North Carolina runs its elections securely and very well, and most of the committee's recommendations were tweaks rather than sweeping reforms. If you'd like to learn more, the 2024 Confident Elections Tour will be visiting more than 20 locations around the state throughout the summer and fall, with a final virtual tour scheduled for October 15th.
Meanwhile, I heard some interesting findings from other committee members on Monday that I wanted to share.
North Carolina Republicans used to vote by mail in large numbers, but that has changed.
Voting by mail, also known as absentee voting by mail, has been a source of controversy across the country, with some politicians, particularly Republicans, questioning the possibility of voter fraud.
From 2004 to 2016, Republicans made up the largest percentage of North Carolina voters who voted by mail, ranging from 40% to 54%. That's according to findings from the Orange County Board of Elections, Executive Director Shawnee Seese announced on Monday.
But those voting patterns have shifted: From 2018 to 2022, Democrats surged to majority status with a 41% to 44% share.
White voters overwhelmingly vote by mail
Citing an analysis of party registration data, Schiess noted that white, non-Hispanic voters in North Carolina vote by mail far more than all other races combined. In 2020, 68% of mail-in ballots were cast by white voters. That figure was higher than ever before: in 2008, 89% of mail-in ballots were cast by white voters. By comparison, over the past 30 years, only 3% of absentee mail-in ballots were cast by minority voters.
North Carolina had the most votes in 2020
In the November 2020 presidential election, 7.5 million voters showed up to the polls — and remember, that was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic — which represents 75% of eligible voters who cast ballots, according to Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba and leader of the committee that analyzed the state's election data.
North Carolina had one of the closest election races in the country that year, with Donald Trump beating Joe Biden by 1.34%.
NC has very secure elections.
North Carolina's elections are “very secure” in terms of both protecting the elections from hackers and handling the ballots, said Col. James Hardaway (retired), chair of the Committee on Ballot Security, Cybersecurity and Register Management, who served in the Army Intelligence Service for 27 years before retiring and working on cybersecurity and systems modernization.
“I'm trained to see the bad things that can happen with technology,” he said. “I feel very confident about the election. The public is not.”
He said more education for voters is needed.
North Carolina voters use paper ballots and the voting system is relatively simple, which Hardaway said gives it an advantage in terms of security.
“One ballot per voter really helps when technology doesn't work,” he said. “You need something that the voter touched to prove that they actually voted.”
And in North Carolina, he added, “no system related to ballots can be connected to the Internet.”
Threats against North Carolina election workers on the rise
As in other parts of the state, threats against election workers have increased: 25% of North Carolina election workers have reported receiving threats in the past two years, said Leslie Garvin, executive director of NC State Campus Engagement and chair of the Election Infrastructure and Management Committee.
Garvin said 18 states have special legal protections for election workers, but North Carolina is not one of them.
“Brain drain” of election veterans
Garvin reported that the state is facing a “brain drain” of local election board leadership. Her comments were perhaps the most concerning to me as the state prepares for the political equivalent of the Super Bowl.
Garvin said 61 of the state's 100 election board chairs have been replaced in the past five years, and 10 counties will have chairs replaced in 2023. And many election staff have quit or become burned out, in part due to public anger and increased scrutiny. County election boards across the state are facing hiring challenges, Garvin said.
The rise of independent voters
In March 2022, voters registered as independents in North Carolina became the largest demographic of voters in the state, followed by Democrats and Republicans. In some ways, this dramatic development cements North Carolina's purple status more than anything else: Many North Carolina voters look at the two parties at their disposal and decide, “neither.”
This does not mean that independent voters, and especially independent candidates, have more power at the ballot box. Quite the opposite.
Candidates who aren't affiliated with one of the state's eight recognized parties must gather often-frightening signatures just to get their name on the ballot, even in local elections (although people who claim party affiliation can pay a fee to be added to the ballot).
The larger the race, the stricter the signature requirements. Sherane Etchison, an Army Special Forces veteran who lives in Moore County, became the first independent House candidate in state history to collect more than 7,500 signatures from registered voters in her district.
“I feel like our country is craving a diverse range of candidates, and the numbers show that,” she told WUNC in an interview earlier this month. “I've been an independent for years, and 35 percent of the people in my district are independent as well.”
In the race for the 9th District, which represents part of Fayetteville, Etchison will face off against Republican incumbent Rep. Richard Hudson and Democratic challenger Nigel Bristow.
State legislators can pick the winner in statewide elections.
An unclearly worded provision in the North Carolina Constitution (Article VI, Section 5) could allow the North Carolina General Assembly to choose the winner if the results of a runoff election are challenged, former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr wrote in a report for the Challenges and Litigation Commission. The measure applies to elections including those for governor and for state legislative offices that are roughly equivalent to Cabinet posts, such as treasurer and secretary of state.
The fact that state legislatures can pick the winner was a shock to many of us on the elections committee.
“This has only been done once in the history of North Carolina,” Orr said, “and that was in the 2004 election for public school superintendent.”
Under this procedure, the House and Senate would have committees of five people, three from one party and two from the other.
“Ultimately, the General Assembly will determine the winner of the election,” Oh said. “We are approaching an election cycle where it is not inconceivable that we will have very close state legislative races. We need to let the public know.”
Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
