North Carolina changes election rules

Western North Carolina will likely remain a disaster area for the foreseeable future. As a signal of that, the North Carolina State Board of Elections has already announced changes in election rules. CNAV will examine these rule changes critically, to determine which rules will – or will not – redound to the advantage of Democrats hoping to carry the State.

North Carolina elections at a glance

This year, neither of North Carolina’s two Republican Senators faces reelection. Thom Tillis won reelection in 2020, and Ted Budd won reelection two years later. Of course, all the Tarheel State’s 14 U.S. Representatives face reelection. Half of them are Republican – and of those seven, six represent districts in the disaster area. Therefore, if their regular constituents don’t vote, Democrats could oust them from the House. Asheville, especially, as the Democratic bastion of the Eleventh District, could knock out Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-11th).

In addition, the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and all other State-wide officers face reelection. So are all legislative seats in both chambers, because even Senators serve two-year terms. North Carolina is not an off-year State.

As regular readers know, your editor is an Officer of Election with three years’ experience. This includes one election (a dual-party non-Presidential primary) in which he served as Chief of Precinct. In addition to this service record, CNAV has researched election methods extensively. That includes the gathering movement to dispense with electronic voting machines (at least the scanner-tabulators) and return to paper ballots.

The affected area

Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit reported on election rule changes in parts of North Carolina at 9:30 a.m. EDT. He quoted this report by Aubrie Spady at Fox News. In addition, the State Board of Elections has a landing page for “voters affected by Hurricane Helene.” Those two pages detail all the relevant election news in the Tarheel State.

The NCSBE page shows a map of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster area designation. This includes twenty-five counties, and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian Tribal Area. The twenty-eight counties and equivalent areas within the disaster area are Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Cherokee (Tribal Area), Clay, Cleveland, Gaston, Graham (Tribal Area), Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Lincoln, Macon, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Swain (Tribal Area), Transylvania, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey.

According to Fox, the NCSBE identified thirteen counties as the hardest hit. They are: Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey. Of these, Democrats own Buncombe County (where Asheville is seated). All other counties are Republican-dominated or “red” counties. These are where most of the rule changes will apply.

Effect of the rule changes

One can read the board’s Emergency Resolution affecting those thirteen Counties here.

The resolution lets Boards of Elections in those thirteen counties change early voting plans “by bipartisan majority vote” without seeking State Board approval. This could include:

1. Changing early voting sites, adding new sites, and removing unusable sites,
2. Adding or reducing days when any given site is open for early voting, and
3. Extending or reducing hours of operation on an open day.

Next, the State Board authorizes county boards to change election day polling places, with approval from the State Board. This could include:

1. Transferring voters from one precinct to another – though they would scan their ballots in scanner-tabulators reserved for them,
2. Establishing voting places out-of-precinct,
3. Establishing more than one voting location in any given precinct, and
4. Letting voters vote in person at the central voting precinct.

County boards now apparently have more flexibility in appointing Officers of Election. This includes:

1. Appointing OOEs from out-of-county,
2. Appointing OOEs “without regard to … precinct of residence,”
3. Ensuring the filling of OOE vacancies with members of the same Party as the absent officer,
4. Appointing emergency “election day assistants,”
5. Reassigning OOEs as necessary, without regard to original assignment, to ensure sufficient knowledge and experience, and
6. When necessary, administering oaths of office over the telephone or by electronic signature.

Absentee ballot voting and counting process:

The NCSBE made the following rules for the handling of absentee ballot requests and ballots:

Any voter, or his legal guardian or near relative, may request an absentee ballot in person until the day before the election (November 4). They may also show up in person to “cure” an absentee ballot, or accept a reissued ballot after ballot “spoilage.” Completed absentee ballots are due at 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.

Mail-in ballots may go to another county’s board, or the State Board, by the 7:30 p.m. deadline., Such ballots then must arrive at the County Board office one day before the “county canvass.”

Absentee voters, or their guardians or relatives, in the thirteen counties, may hand-deliver their ballots to any other county’s Board offices. The 7:30 p.m. Election Day deadline applies, and the receiving board must send those ballots to the home board the day before “canvass.” They may do this by tracked mail, commercial delivery service (like FedEx), or hand delivery by board staff.

Finally, the resolution provides for Multipartisan Assistance Teams to help with absentee ballot handling. Recruitment now extends to unaffiliated or minor-party affiliated prospects.

The State Board will also handle voter registration applications from the thirteen counties. The resolution ends with a statement on coordination with the State’s Division of Emergency Management.

Apart from all the changes mentioned, replacement photo IDs are available, free of charge, from county boards or DMV stations. The board also announced procedures to request absentee ballots at new or temporary locations.

How will this affect North Carolina?

Your editor finds the OOE appointment changes a trifle strange. His State routinely lets unit (county or independent city) election boards appoint OOEs from out-of-unit. While his county election board makes every effort to assign OOEs to their precincts of residence, that is not always possible. (Last year, for instance, half the OOE pool resigned, typically saying, “We’re getting old for this sort of thing!”) Chiefs of Precinct understand that they must be “circuit riders.”

The only inconveniences for an OOE serving out-of-precinct are:

• Extra travel time to and from the precinct of service and the unit board’s offices after close of polls, and
• Lack of familiarity with voters in the precinct of service.

This does not present a problem for any conscientious OOE. The problems with these rule changes involve submission of absentee ballots to out-of-county boards of election. Two problems arise:

• Transit time from the receiving board to the voter’s board of residence, especially if logistics have not improved, and
• Integrity of the absentee ballot handling process.

Specifically, those receiving boards might be less able to detect fraudulent submissions than are the boards of residence.

One commenter raised a concern when Marc Elias, the Democrats’ favorite election-law legal eagle (vulture?), expressed approval of the changes.

North Carolina changes voting rules after hurricane and Mark Elias approves-what could possibly go wrong?

Team Trump weighs in

At 10:00 a.m. EDT, Jim Hoft posted another report about concerns that President Donald J. Trump has expressed. He did not limit his concern to the thirteen counties the emergency resolution covers. Indeed he expressed concern about all twenty-eight counties and their equivalents in the FEMA emergency designation. More than five hundred thirty thousand people voted for Trump in 2020 – and he wants to make sure they will be able to vote this year. Paul Sperry left this X post:

SCOOP: Trump campaign fears >530k Trump voters in western NC cd be disenfranchised by Helene. In fact,26 of 28 counties hit by flooding voted for Trump in ’20. “There’s a 4-to-1 disparity (vs Biden/Harris voters). We’re very concerned,” a Trump insider said. NC=16 electoral votes

Indeed, Politico.com almost gleefully suggested that the damage Hurricane Helene did “could swing the election.”

Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference. And Helene has pushed this contest into novel territory: It’s the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election, based on a POLITICO’s E&E News analysis of data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The challenge for Trump: The parts of western North Carolina and eastern Georgia that were flooded by the monster storm are largely Republican. In 2020, he won 61 percent of the vote in the North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster after Helene. He won 54 percent of the vote in Georgia’s disaster counties.

Trump has already arranged to tour North Carolina by bus, beginning today and lasting through Friday. (The Jim Hoft piece gives the schedule.) His goal, obviously, is to see that voter turnout remains high.

But Politico’s staff are kidding themselves if they think voter preference will turn away from Trump. If anything, it will turn toward him. Witnesses – including one local resident and members of the United Cajun Navy – suspect all manner of federal skulduggery. (Some even suspect the government of spinning up and steering Hurricane Helene, and perhaps Hurricane Milton also, toward Trump-favoring areas, to cause maximum damage and suppress or even eliminate voter turnout.) Also, remember David Axelrod openly suggesting that Trump voters would be too busy to vote. Let’s just say that Trump and his supporters “heard that.”

Self-reliant people will carry the day

More to the point, North Carolina residents, especially in the FEMA designated disaster area, are llkely in a “change” mood. FEMA let them down – or worse, if that helicopter rotor-wash incident was due to anything worse than a situation-unaware pilot. In its place, local neighbors formed their own emergency response cadres, delivering supplies on pack mules when necessary. In fact the most prominent outside disaster-relief agencies do not include FEMA, or even North Carolina Emergency Management. They are the United Cajun Navy, Samaritan’s Purse, and, to a lesser degree, the Western North Carolina Red Cross.

The new rules from the North Carolina State Board of Elections might introduce an election-integrity vulnerability regarding absentee ballot handling. But they also include rules making it easier to vote early and in person. Furthermore, county boards can implement these early-voting changes without going through the State Board. Some commenters worry about hiring OOEs from out-of-county and moving them around within counties. But many jurisdictions do this all the time. That’s not the source of election-integrity concern. The biggest concern ought to be ensuring that the State counts all votes properly – and that concern predates Hurricane Helene. Besides, President Trump is already involved in North Carolina disaster relief, in partnership with Samaritan’s Purse.

In short, all the evidence suggests that Trump will still carry North Carolina, if he’s diligent enough. But the only hope for lasting change will be to replace North Carolina’s feckless Democratic governor, who also let his residents down.