Associated Press
North Carolina’s Super Tuesday ballot has plenty to draw voters, with primaries for Governor and President in a swing state that will be among the most closely watched in November.
But first, voters must deal with a long list of new laws pushed by Republican lawmakers to make sure they can cast their ballots — and that they will be counted.
This will be the first statewide election requiring voters to provide a photo ID to vote in person due to a 2018 law that had been delayed by lawsuits. A separate law added a requirement that voters who cast their ballot by mail include a copy of their photo ID in the envelope. Yet another change approved last year says any mailed ballot received after Tuesday won’t be counted, eliminating the previous three-day grace period for ballots postmarked by the day of the election.
All this has landed on local election officials, who must not only work the new rules into their election preparations but also educate voters on how to navigate them.
“If you don’t know if you’ve got the right kind of ID, just bring everything you got,” said Charlie Collicutt, elections director in Guilford County, home to some 377,000 registered voters. “Dump your purse out and we’re going to find if one of your IDs works. And if it doesn’t, we got a process for you.”
His advice to voters: Be persistent and don’t let the new rules deter you from casting a ballot.
The changes in North Carolina were among the most extensive state voting reforms passed last year and continue a trend among Republican state legislatures, many of which have passed laws since 2021 adding new voting restrictions. The laws were pushed through after former President Donald Trump began falsely claiming that widespread fraud cost him reelection, claims that have resonated with many Republicans.
Democrats in North Carolina and elsewhere have criticized many of the new laws as attacks on voting rights that often target minority and low-income voters. North Carolina’s changes in 2023 were pushed through without any Democratic support by Republican lawmakers who hold a super-majority in the legislature. They overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, whose final term ends this year.
“They want chaos to continue to try and cover up the fact that Trump tried to steal this election,” Cooper said in an interview. “They are trying to change the laws in order to gain significant advantage by restricting people’s voting rights.”
Mail voting has been a major focus of Republican legislatures over the past few years. They have moved up deadlines to request mail ballots, added ID requirements and limited third-party ballot collection. Some states also have banned or limited the use of ballot drop boxes.
In another state voting Tuesday, Texas, legal challenges have not stopped sweeping changes made in 2021 from taking effect. During the state’s 2022 primary, about 13% of mail ballots were rejected as voters struggled to navigate new rules.
One of the new laws in North Carolina that has drawn significant concerns, a planned overhaul of who picks state and county election board members, is on hold pending a legal challenge.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
2 comments
Dont Say FLA
March 4, 2024 at 1:03 pm
Summing all charges in all states for all fraudulent votes cast in 2020, does the total number match Donald J Trump’s 91 indictments? Does it even come close? One tenth, perhaps? Were there even 9 fraudulent votes cast?
Ron Forrest Ron
March 5, 2024 at 8:03 am
When voting fraud is exceedingly rare, affecting less than 1 in a million votes, but a political party keeps making it harder for people to vote, you got to ask yourself why.
Why does the Florida GOP keep piling restrictions onto voting in the name of fraud prevention where there’s no fraud problem to solve?
Given no effective voting fraud (outside of Rhonda’s Florida issuing voter registrations to felons that didn’t qualify and then arresting them when they believed they could vote and went out and voted, and that was all manufactured by Rhonda’s government, be they inept or malicious) , the “keep voting safe” lines are obviously not their real reason behind GOP’s ever increasing list of restrictions on voters.
Given how the GOP is trying to prevent ballot measures too, and there’s no fraud there, not even a vector for fraud, you got to ask yourself why.
Why doesn’t Florida’s GOP want Florida’s voters to vote? It’s not “Fraud.” It’s not “words are confusing” like Assley says. So, what really is the GOP’s problem with voters voting?
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