A new proposal would make it easier for North Carolina county boards of election to throw out ballots of people who don’t show photo ID when they vote.
Under the proposal, county boards would no longer have to agree unanimously that voters lied about the reasons they didn’t have ID. A majority on the county boards, on which Republicans currently hold three of five seats, could determine that voters were lying and reject their ballots.
The changes to the rejection threshold are part of a list of proposed election rules governing absentee ballots and conduct at polling places.
The state Board of Elections took its first step Wednesday to advance the proposals, voting 3-2 to put them out for public comment. The board’s two Democratic members were opposed.
After the 60-day comment period, the board would vote on any revisions. The Rules Review Commission would have to approve.
Voters who don’t have photo ID are given the option of casting a provisional ballot and filling out an exception form saying why they don’t have an ID.
Current instructions that require unanimous votes to determine voters lied on those forms are in a “numbered memo” prepared by former state elections staff and sent to county boards.
Board Secretary Stacy “Four” Eggers IV said Republicans voted against those instructions when they were in the minority on the state board.
The numbered memo “is an attempt essentially to undercut the requirement of photo ID,” said Eggers, a Republican.
Board member Jeff Carmon, a Democrat, said the current instructions ensure that no one’s ballot is thrown out based on a party-line vote. Determinations of a voter’s truthfulness shouldn’t be vulnerable to partisanship, Carmon said: “We don’t want that issue to come into play for something as important as this.”
Democrats also objected to a proposal that would prohibit people from using bullhorns or amplifiers outside polling places during voting hours.
NC election officials approve new rules for noncitizen voter challenges
The proposal could shut down an effort called DJs at the Polls. The national group had DJs at polling sites around the state in 2024. DJs at the Polls is a nonpartisan voter turnout program aimed at making voting a celebration. Its website says it focuses on states where registered voters don’t regularly cast ballots.
Carmons said the proposal was an example of “overregulating.”
The proposal would also give the chief judges at polling places the power to ask people making noises that can be heard inside to turn down the volume.
Democrat Siobhan Millen said such a rule would be hard to enforce. “I can conceive of a situation where there’s a polling place in a high school, and it’s band practice,” she said.
Millen suggested that the state staff send county boards instructions to prepare for the possible presence of federal agents at the polls this November and the potential seizure of ballots, but the board rejected that idea along party lines.
Though federal law prohibits sending armed forces to polling places, some Democrats and voting-rights advocates are worried that ICE agents will show up at polls this fall, or that ballots will be confiscated.
Border czar Tom Homan has refused to rule out sending ICE agents to polling places, The Hill reported. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche also appeared to support the idea of ICE at polling places, The Hill also reported.
In January, the FBI raided the Fulton County, Ga. elections warehouse, seizing ballots from the 2020 election. Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta, was central to President Donald Trump’s false claim that election fraud cost him the 2020 election.
County officials should know what to do if troops show up at polling sites or if federal officials come to confiscate ballots, Millen said.
“Serious leadership on our part will be to get ready,” she said.
Republicans said no instructions are needed because local elections directors know who to call for help when unusual situations arise.
“I don’t think any of our chief judges or county directors would allow someone to walk into a polling place and walk off with their ballot box,” Eggers said.
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