RALEIGH, N.C. (December 11, 2024) — On Wednesday afternoon, North Carolina lawmakers overrode Gov. Cooper’s veto of Senate Bill 382, resulting in sweeping changes to election administration and voting rights. The passage of this power-grab bill will erode public trust in elections and hand unfettered oversight of core government functions to partisan politicians.
While sold as a partial Hurricane Helene disaster relief bill that would also “create more efficiency and to bring certainty to our elections,” SB382 in fact does the direct opposite. According to public data, over 24,000 mail ballots were received on Election Day. Now that SB382 has become law, counties are required to count all Election Day mail ballots in an ongoing meeting at 5:00 PM and announce the final count within three days, an extreme compression of the current 10 days. The change will deny voters timely notice and opportunity to cure their mail ballots, resulting in a significant number of eligible voters who won’t have their vote count, especially young adults, older people, and people who are disabled.
These same changes apply to provisional ballots. Over 6,000 provisional ballots were cast related to voter photo ID—under SB382 these eligible voters, who are disproportionately Black, are in jeopardy of being disenfranchised.
“Drastic changes like these need to be researched, studied, and consulted by experts and people who run our elections, including the State Board and county boards – not behind closed doors in a rushed process that leaves no opportunity for meaningful public comment,” said Katelin Kaiser, Policy Director with Democracy North Carolina. “Without these actions, what is going on can only be described as intentional voter suppression and a power grab.”
As lawmakers have been considering SB382, allies of legislative leadership have also been asking the NC State Board of Elections and state courts to cancel the votes of at least 60,000 eligible voters and to overturn the NC Supreme Court Associate Justice election results without any evidence and using failed legal arguments. Yesterday, the results of the second recount confirmed the candidate of choice for North Carolinians is Justice Allison Riggs.
“Eligible voters across North Carolina have spoken, and we must respect these results,” Kaiser said. “We can connect the dots. We are not fools. Like these election protests, SB382 is not about election result certainty or accuracy, it is about deliberately erecting barriers to silence specific voters they know oppose their harmful agenda and to disenfranchise voters when results do not go as planned. This can’t be how our democracy works.”
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Democracy North Carolina is a statewide nonpartisan organization that uses research, organizing, and advocacy to strengthen democratic structures, build power among disenfranchised communities, and inspire confidence in a transformed political process that works for all.