Here’s what North Carolina needs to know ahead of the November election

Who says Republicans, Democrats, independent voters, progressives, conservatives, moderates and people from across the political spectrum cannot work together? It can happen.

North Carolina is again expected to be a close battleground state in the race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Angry political divisions are at the forefront of the national conversation, as we barrel toward the November general election just four months away.

A statewide elections commission I am serving with, however, has been a welcome breath of fresh air. Its encouraging findings should help bring down the temperature, at least for us here in the Old North State.

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Who says Republicans, Democrats, independent voters, progressives, conservatives, moderates and others from across the political spectrum cannot work together? It can happen.

The Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections is conducting a deep dive into how our state runs elections. It is a project of the NC Network for Fair, Safe & Secure Elections, in partnership with Catawba College in Salisbury and the international The Carter Center, headquartered in Atlanta. 

At a time when the two major political parties are accusing each other of undermining democracy, our group is meant to find common ground on elections and help strengthen democracy close to home — and model it for other states. Election officials, professors, local and statewide politicians, nonprofit leaders and others formed 11 specialized committees that looked at everything from mail-in ballots to early voting, to ballot security and voter access and registration. 

After the Trump rally shooting

Committee chairs presented our draft findings Monday inside at the rather stunning and eco-awesome Center for the Environment on the campus of Catawba College in Salisbury. The previously scheduled meeting was two days after Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. It was a stark reminder for me that we have to come together as a country or we’ll fall apart, and the incident, where one attendee was killed and two others injured, imbued our commission’s work with a sense of urgency. 

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Chris Cooper, a political science and public affairs professor at Western Carolina University and author of the soon-to-be published “Anatomy of a Purple State” summed it up, during his remarks Monday.

“This really has worked remarkably well,” he said. “And what really made me think tha, is I have no idea of the party affiliation of folks, at least on the committees that I was on. If they told me to guess the party IDs of these people, I wouldn’t do very well.” 

I can say the same. 

Consensus opinion: We do alright in NC

The draft findings represent months of work, and we will not finish until early next year. Any recommendations we make would be advisory: State lawmakers decide the election laws, and state and local boards of elections make the decisions about the mechanics of executing those laws.

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The consensus opinion on the commission appears to be that North Carolina runs secure elections and runs them extremely well, and most of the committees’ suggestions were tweaks versus a radical overhaul. If you want to hear more about it, a 2024 Trusted Elections Tour will stop at more than two dozen locations across the state over the summer and fall, with a final, virtual tour scheduled for Oct. 15.

Meanwhile, I heard some interesting findings on Monday from my fellow commission members — and thought I’d share. 

NC Republicans used to cast lots of mail-in ballots. That changed.

Mail-in ballots, also called absentee mail-in ballots, have become a bone of contention nationally, as some politicians, especially Republicans, have questioned their potential for voter fraud.

From 2004 to 2016, Republicans were the largest block of voters in North Carolina who cast mail-in ballots, with their share ranging from 40% to 54%. This, according to findings from the Counting Votes Committee, and presented Monday by Shawnee Seese, secretary of the Orange County Board of Elections.

That voting pattern however, changed. From 2018 to 2022, Democrats moved into the plurality with the share ranging from 41% to 44%.

White voters by far cast more mail-in ballots

In North Carolina, mail-in ballots are cast by white, non-Hispanic voters in much larger proportions than other races combined, according to Seese, citing analysis from party registration data. In 2020, 68% of mail-in ballots were cast by white voters. The number has been higher in the past: 89% of mail-ins were cast by white voters in 2008. By comparison, just 3% of absentee mail-in ballots were cast by minority voters, looking at data over the last 30 years.

NC voted heavy in 2020

The 2020 November presidential election drew 7.5 million registered voters to the poll — and remember, that was during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. This number translates to 75% of registered voters who cast ballots, according to Michael Bitzer, a Catawba politics and history professor, and a leader on the commission, who crunched state election figures.

North Carolina had one of the closest races in the country that year, with Donald Trump defeating Joe Biden by 1.34%. 

NC runs very secure elections

North Carolina elections are “very secure” both in terms of protecting the election from hackers and how ballots are handled, said Col. (retired) James Hardaway, with the Ballot Security, Cybersecurity and List Maintenance Committee. Hardaway served in Army intelligence for 27 years and after retirement moved into cybersecurity and modernizing systems.

“I’m trained to see the bad things that can happen in technology,” he said. “I’m very secure in how I feel about our elections. The public is not.”

He said there was a need for more voter education.

North Carolina voters use paper ballots and its voting systems are relatively simple, which Hardaway said was an advantage in terms of security.

“One ballot per voter really helps when technology fails,” he said. “You need something a voter touched to really prove that their vote was there.”

And he added in North Carolina, “No system that touches a ballot can touch the internet.”

Threats to NC election workers — up

Like elsewhere, threats to our state’s elections workers have been rising: 25% of N.C. election workers have reported threats over the last two years, said Leslie Garvin, executive director of North Carolina Campus Engagement and chair of the Election Infrastructure and Administration Committee.

Eighteen states have specific legal protections for election workers, Garvin said, but North Carolina is not one. 

‘Brain drain’ of elections veterans

The state is facing a “brain drain” of leadership on its local elections boards, Garvin reported. Her comments were probably the most concerning for me as the state prepares for the political equivalent of the Super Bowl.

Sixty-one of the state’s 100 elections directors have turned over in the last five years, and 10 counties lost directors in 2023, Garvin said. Many election staffers have also retired or burned out, in part related to increased anger and scrutiny from the public. County elections boards statewide face recruiting challenges, she said.

The rise of the unaffiliated voter 

In March of 2022, North Carolina voters who registered as unaffiliated became the largest block of voters in the state, followed by Democrats and then Republicans. In some respects, this seismic development establishes the state’s purple status as much as anything else — a lot of Tar Heels are looking at the two parties on the menu and deciding, “none of the above.”

That does not mean unaffiliated voters, and most especially, unaffiliated candidates, have more power at the ballot box. Just the opposite.

Candidates who do not claim one of the state’s eight recognized parties, even in local races, have to collect an often intimidating amount of signatures just to get their name on the ballot. (Whereas people who claim a party affiliation can be added at the cost of a fee.)

The bigger the race, the more steep the signature requirement. Shelane Etchison, an Army Special Forces veteran who lives in Moore County, became the first unaffiliated congressional candidate in state history after collecting more than 7,500 signatures from registered voters in her district. 

“I feel like our country is thirsty and hungry for different candidate options, and the numbers show it,” she told WUNC in an interview earlier this month.  “I’ve been unaffiliated for quite some years now, and 35% of the people in this district are unaffiliated as well.” 

In the race for the 9th Congressional District, which represents part of Fayetteville, Etchison faces incumbent Republican Rep. Richard Hudson; and Democratic challenger Nigel Bristow.

Legislators could pick a winner in statewide races

A vaguely worded statute in the state Constitution (Article 6, Section 5) could allow the N.C. General Assembly, the state legislature, to choose a winner if the results of a runoff election are challenged, according to Bob Orr, retired N.C. Supreme Court justice, in his report from the Committee on Challenges and Lawsuits. The action would apply to races that include the governor’s race and statewide races for the Council of State, such as treasurer and secretary of state, which are roughly equivalent to cabinet positions.

That the state legislature could pick a winner was shocking to learn for many of us on the elections commission. 

“This has only been done once in the history of North Carolina,” Orr said, “That was back in 2004 in a race for superintendent of public instruction.”

Under the process, the House and Senate would form a five-person committee with three from one party, two from the other.

“At the end of it, the General Assembly will determine who won that election,” Orr said. “And we’re coming up in an election cycle in which it is not inconceivable there will be very close races for Council of State elections; the public needs to be informed.” 

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.