North Carolina elections officials made major changes to overseas and military voting rules Monday in response to court rulings in the 2024 race for a state Supreme Court seat.

Some say those changes should have been made by lawmakers, not appointed officials.

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In the lawsuit over that Supreme Court race, Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin challenged the ballots of thousands of overseas and military voters, saying they could be fraudulent because the state didn’t require those voters to present photo identification, which is required of in-person voters in the state.

Griffin didn’t offer any evidence of fraud in his filings. But the Republican majority on the state Court of Appeals agreed that election rules needed to be changed to prevent the possibility of fraud, saying election workers had been misinterpreting the intent of the state’s photo ID law.

The court also ruled that adult children of military or overseas voters who have never physically resided in North Carolina should not be allowed to vote in state and local elections. People who have only ever lived overseas, but whose parents are North Carolina voters, had been allowed to vote in North Carolina for years until Griffin challenged that system.

The state Supreme Court didn’t overrule either of those decisions.

Griffin’s efforts to overturn the election results were procedurally complex, often winning in state court but losing in federal court. However, the federal judge only blocked his effort to throw out people’s 2024 ballots, so that ruling didn’t undo the new rules the state’s appellate courts created for future elections during the Griffin case. The state board on Monday made those court-ordered changes official.

Under the new rule, voters who haven’t lived in North Carolina before, state elections director Sam Hayes said, those “never resident” voters would still be allowed to vote in federal races under federal voting law. But their votes in other races will no longer be counted.

Bob Rucho, a Republican on the state elections board, questioned why they would be allowed to vote in congressional races. Hayes said that’s what the court decision said.

“While this is not probably the policy decision that anybody would have come up with, I think it is the best fit to bring us into compliance with those various court decisions in the way they overlap, the way federal law and state law overlap,” Hayes said during a meeting of the board on Monday. “They are U.S. citizens, and they have to vote somewhere.”

Ann Webb, policy director at Common Cause North Carolina, says it’s unusual for states to add extra requirements for military and overseas voters because they’re already covered by a federal voting law, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Common Cause frequently sues the state over election laws it considers unconstitutional.

“It’s in the title of the law, right? It's supposed to be uniform,” Webb said in an interview with WRAL News. “This method of voting was created by Congress to ensure that folks serving on military bases, whether in the United States or outside the United States in combat zones, their family members and other overseas voters would have a consistent way to vote, no matter what state they keep their residence in.”

Webb said decisions like this should be made by state lawmakers, not by state elections officials based on a single court ruling.

“I think there's a real question here of why isn't the legislature having a discussion about what barriers there are for our military voters and their families to vote? What other challenges might they have to submitting voter ID in a combat zone?” Webb said. “It's just been part of this sort of very partisan fight over this one race, and nobody has gone back to have a bigger conversation.”

The other rule approved Monday confirms the process of verifying the address of voters who use same-day registration by mailing them a postcard, and, if it’s returned, giving the voter a second chance to confirm their address.

State lawmakers had previously removed the requirement for the second attempt, but it was added back as a temporary rule after voting rights groups sued over the change in federal court. The vote on Monday affirms that the two-step process will be the process going forward.