North Carolina’s Board of Elections endangered voters’ voices

OPINION:

The post-election uncertainty we’ve been warned about for weeks is upon us, and it’s worse than we imagined. North Carolina’s results are deeply important for both the outcome of the presidency and the control of the U.S. Senate, and the inability to call our state on Nov. 3 has created a crisis-level void in voter confidence.

The heart of the problem lies in the Board of Elections rewriting the playbook for counting absentee ballots in the final inning of the game. As of Sunday morning, nearly a million absentee ballots had been received, as well as more than 3.6 million votes cast early in person. And while the North Carolina Secretary of State forecasted that 97% of ballots would be counted on Tuesday night, the results today are showing both the Senate and the presidency well within a 3% margin.

That’s why the new rules implemented wholesale by the state Board of Elections are so damaging to voter confidence. While Republicans were able to preserve and enhance some security measures, eliminating signature matching and extending ballot acceptance were jammed through the courts without legislative input. Because of the board’s recklessness, the control of the U.S. Senate and the presidency may hang in the balance.

The fewer safeguards we have in the system, the more misconduct we’ll see in the election, and we saw this election season that no voting method allows for more misconduct than mail-in voting. A few weeks ago, a friend told me about her daughter’s experience with potential misconduct here in North Carolina. The friend had gone to vote early in person in Greensboro and was told she had already voted by mail — but she hadn’t. When the clerks checked the voter rolls, he noticed the address the woman’s voter registration card did not match the one on the rolls. It seemed someone at a completely different address had changed her registration information and cast a mailed absentee ballot in her name. 

The situation was referred to the Board of Elections, but it illustrates the importance of maintaining as many security measures as possible. Unfortunately, the Board of Elections worked overtime to make misconduct as easy as possible. The agency, colluding with litigation-happy lawyers from special interest groups, tried to gut the state’s witness requirement for absentee ballots, allow ballot boxes and accept ballots received nine days after the election. Most egregiously, the board agreed to accept an affidavit that would stand in for a missing signature, a missing witness signature, a missing name or other problems.

The witness requirement has proved important in the past: It helped North Carolina catch election fraudsters during a 2018 congressional election. In that election, a political operative who had worked for both parties allegedly filled out absentee applications for vulnerable groups such as the elderly, turned those applications in and, according to the Board of Elections, filled out and turned in ballots for many of those voters. By comparing witness signatures on many of those ballots, investigators were able to catch the perpetrators. Thankfully, courts stopped the board from gutting witness signatures, but the remainder of the new cure process stayed in place, making it harder to track down and stop election fraud.  

North Carolina is not the only state to see unelected bureaucrats overriding duly enacted law on election safeguards, nor is it the only state where the presidential elections hang in the balance. The Pennsylvania Department of State issued guidance instructing county clerks not to reject a ballot because of a signature mismatch. Mailed ballots require no photo ID or any other identifying information, except a signature. If someone obtains someone else’s ballot, and the only safeguard is a signature, what is ensuring the integrity of Pennsylvania’s election if the signature is meaningless?

There are countless instances of bad actors seeking to influence election outcomes across the country. The bad actors will always be with us, which is why we set up safeguards against their ability to influence any system, including elections. By eliminating the safeguards wholesale, the state Board of Elections has tried to cripple our ability to keep bad actors from influencing electoral outcomes. The North Carolina legislature has and will continue to step up to defend duly enacted laws that ensure the integrity of the election and its results. Voter confidence, now and in future elections, depends on it. 

• Jason Saine, a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, represents House District 97 in the N.C. General Assembly.