Neighbors on Call’s NC Policy Update for 11/25/24

Governance

• Last week the NC House and NC Senate passed a bill, ostensibly for Hurricane Helene relief, that included multiple measures intended to strip power from the incoming Democratic administration. In response to the election of Josh Stein, Jeff Jackson, and other Democrats to the Council of State, Republicans included measures to remove control from the governor over the State Board of Elections, prevent the attorney general from arguing that state laws are unconstitutional or advocating for customers at the state Utilities Commission, and eliminate commissions led by the lieutenant governor and superintendent of public instruction. Only the first 12 pages of the 131-page bill deal with relief for Hurricane Helene. The bill now goes to Governor Cooper, who will likely veto it. Because three Western NC Republicans joined Democrats in the NC House in opposing the bill, Republicans would not be able to override a veto without some votes changing. (See also NC Newsline’s piece for additional details.)

  
  

• Republicans in the NCGA elected their leadership this week. On Tuesday NC House Republicans elected Rep. Destin Hall (Caldwell and Watauga counties) as the new speaker of the House. Hall has previously served as the co-chair of the Rules Committee, and his replacement of Rep. Tim Moore after Moore’s fifth term was planned. On Wednesday NC Senate Republicans elected Sen. Phil Berger to an eighth two-year term as Senate president pro tempore.

  
  

• The NCGA voted this week to override Governor Cooper’s September veto of a bill that would expand private school vouchers and force sheriffs to cooperate with ICE. On Tuesday the NC House voted 72-44 to override the veto, and on Wednesday the NC Senate voted 30-19 to override the veto, making HB 10 law. The bill allocates an additional $463.5 million this year and next to the “Opportunity Scholarship” program of private school vouchers, allowing for vouchers to go to people who were previously waitlisted, including wealthy families. It also requires sheriffs to detain undocumented immigrants if requested to do so by ICE – a measure that could be relevant to implementing the incoming federal government’s mass deportation plans.

  
  

Voting Rights 

• The Republican challenging Allison Riggs’s NC Supreme Court seat, Jefferson Griffin, has challenged over 60,000 ballots, aiming to get them thrown out in a race that he has lost by 625 votes, in the latest tally. The voters he is challenging include overseas voters who have never lived in the United States., those who didn’t include a driver’s license number or last four digits of SSN on their voter registration form, and those that may be ineligible due to felony convictions. The State Board of Elections is overseeing the investigation into the challenged votes. Griffin has also requested a recount.

  
  

• After NC Senate majority leader Phil Berger baselessly alleged that voting in North Carolina is somehow rigged in favor of Democrats, top elections official Karen Brinson Bell wrote a letter calling for him to retract his statement. Brinson Bell emphasized that false information about election fraud, especially coming from a state official, harms trust in elections and can lead to threats of violence against elections officials.

  
  

Economic Policy

• Last week the NC House and NC Senate passed a provision, as part of the controversial Hurricane Helene relief bill, to extend funding for child care centers for three additional months. SB 382 allocates over $33 million to keep child care centers that would otherwise close open until March, when the legislature returns for the long session.

Neighbors on Call’s NC Policy Update for 11/18/24

Election Updates

• After all votes were counted, Democratic State Rep. Terence Everitt won his Senate District 18 race against Republican Ashlee Bryan Adams. Adams may request a recount given the narrow margin, but it is likely the result will remain the same.

  
  

• Riggs inches ahead of Griffin in the race for NC Supreme Court, with more votes to count. Democratic incumbent leads GOP challenger by just two dozen votes out of more than 5.5 million cast –Lynn Bonner, NC Newsline

  
  

• Several NC counties will resume their work to certify 2024 election results on Monday, November 18. These final meetings are being watched closely because of their implications for the results of the NC Supreme Court race between Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin.

  
  

Voting Rights 

• This past week the Wake County Board of Elections reviewed thousands of absentee ballots. While many ballots were counted without incident, some were missing voter signatures or witness information, and 616 others were delivered past the 7:30 PM deadline on Election Day. Observers from voting rights groups and right-wing groups looking to challenge voter status were both present.

Neighbors on Call’s NC Policy Update for 11/12/24

Governance

• Multiple state legislative races are likely to see recounts, but Democrats are confident they have broken the supermajority in the NCGA. Races where the difference between candidates comes down to less than a percentage point after provisional ballots are counted are subject to recounts if a candidate requests one. In the NC House, where Republicans are falling one short of the 72 seats needed for a supermajority, Democrat Brian Cohn initially led incumbent Republican state Rep. Frank Sossamon by 182 votes, or half of a percentage point, in a district that covers Vance and Granville counties. Other close contests include Democrat Dante Pittman’s race against Republican Ken Fontenot in Nash and Wilson Counties, which he was initially up by 2 percentage points, and Democrat Nicole Sidman’s race against Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham in Charlotte, where Sidman was initially behind by 275 votes. NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs is also behind in her race by just 0.14% and is likely to request a recount, even though experts say it is unlikely to change the outcome.

Voting Rights 

• On Wednesday the NC State Board of Elections conducted a post-election audit in which two randomly selected sets of ballots from each county were hand counted and compared with voting machine counts. This audit is legally required as a measure to check machine counting reliability.

• More than 60,000 provisional ballots were cast in the election, including over 6,000 in Wake County and over 5,000 in Mecklenburg County. Local election boards must determine which provisional ballots will be counted by November 15, when they are required to certify the vote. The largest portion of provisional ballots were cast in cases where someone who showed up to vote did not appear on the voter rolls (23,211 cases). In 1,625 cases, voters who failed to show photo ID were told to show one at their county board of elections prior to the end of business on November 14 (usually because they have an ID but forgot to bring it with them to vote), and advocacy groups are now reaching out to those voters to remind them that they need to present ID for their provisional ballots to count.

• The week before the election the state Court of Appeals rejected Republicans’ efforts to not count some votes of overseas military family members. Republicans had sued, claiming that some overseas voters were ineligible and should not be registered, but both a trial court and now the state Court of Appeals denied their claim and said they had provided no evidence that ineligible voters were registered. Separately, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the voter purge case that had partially been sent back to state courts must instead remain in federal court. Republicans had asked the courts to require the State Board of Elections to purge 225,000 voters from the rolls by September 6, which would have conflicted with the federal law that prohibits kicking voters off rolls within 90 days of an election.

• With a 77.6% “yes” vote, voters approved the proposed amendment to change language in the NC Constitution about citizenship requirements for voting. The language about who is allowed to vote in NC will change from “every person born in the United States and every person who has been naturalized” to “only U.S. citizens.”