Gov. Josh Stein vetoed a bill Monday that proposed numerous changes to North Carolina’s elections laws, and which passed the legislature in party-line votes amid fiery debate earlier this month.
Stein hosted dozens of politicians and voting rights advocates at the governor's mansion Monday under the theme “protect our vote,” where he vetoed House Bill 958.
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The bill proposes a number of changes including cutting early voting in some elections, decreasing transparency in campaign finance and making it easier to challenge voters' eligibility and try throwing their ballots out, similar to the 65,000 people challenged in 2024 over typos in a state database.
Stein said Republican lawmakers have spent more than a decade focusing much of their attention and political will on tax cuts or private-school tuition vouchers for the wealthy, with little to show for average people, adding that making voting harder is a part of their strategy.
"Rather than make your life better, they want to make it harder for you to hold them accountable for their failures," Stein said Monday. "... They would rather change the rules of our elections to secure advantage, than to do the work that the voters expect, which is to improve people's lives."
Republican lawmakers, who control the legislature, say the Democratic governor is endangering democracy by vetoing their plan. Cutting early voting can save money, Republicans say, and ramping up efforts to purge the voter rolls or make it easier to challenge and possibly throw out people's ballots will help make it more likely that no fraudulent votes are cast.
There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud in North Carolina, based on audits and investigations led by Democrats and Republicans alike. But GOP leaders say people distrust the system anyway, and they want stricter rules to enhance confidence in elections.
"House Bill 958 continues practical election reforms so we all can have greater confidence that every lawful vote in North Carolina is counted fairly and accurately," the bill's sponsor, Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, said Monday. "Gov. Stein's veto of this legislation puts politics ahead of common sense and the peace of mind voters should have when they cast their ballots."
State lawmakers passed the changes earlier this month just before adjourning for the summer. And they’re unlikely to come back to Raleigh for votes until after the elections, since they’re now focused on campaigning and raising money for those campaigns. But a session in late November or December — after the elections but before new lawmakers are sworn in in January — is expected, and Republican leaders could try overriding Stein’s veto then.
The changes passed the legislature purely along party lines, with Republicans in favor but all Democrats and unaffiliated lawmakers opposed.
"This bill was passed along party lines because it only benefits one party," Democratic House leader Rep. Robert Reives, D-Chatham, said Monday at the governor's mansion.
Among the proposals are a litany of conservative goals: Slashing early voting in certain elections, giving new powers to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek, decreasing transparency in campaign finance laws, and ramping up efforts to purge the state’s list of registered voters by cross-referencing with other databases such as death records.
Stein and other Democrats have questioned Boliek's ability to oversee elections and the post-election audits fairly, since he himself is an elected official. Previously audits have been handled by professional, nonpartisan staffers — overseen by a gubernatorial appointee — at the state Board of Elections. The elections board would continue auditing the election results themselves even if this bill becomes law. Boliek on Monday defended his office’s ability to carry out the audits and criticized Stein for saying he couldn't.
"Post-election audits are a commonsense, objective way to boost public confidence in our elections," Boliek said. "These examinations of election systems are an additional layer of accountability that should be welcomed."
Challenging voters, ballots
Republicans say it’s only common sense to use death records and similar databases to ensure no ineligible people remain on the list of registered voters. Doing so would decrease the potential for fraud, they say.
“North Carolinians want elections they can trust, and House Republicans have consistently advanced practical reforms to improve election integrity,” Blackwell said in a written statement after the bill passed earlier this month.
“These bills build on that work by making our elections even more secure and giving voters even more confidence when they head to the polls,” Blackwell added.
Democrats say it’s not so simple: The 2024 elections and a GOP-backed effort to overturn the election results of a state Supreme Court race that year exposed the fact that government databases for voters’ information aren’t always perfect. They’ve raised concerns that the voter purge efforts could disenfranchise legitimate voters — especially after Republicans also deleted a provision that would’ve given people due process to be told they’re being targeted for from the voting list.
For some Democrats, that was a step too far.
“Those databases, we know, are flawed,” Rep. Phil Rubin, D-Wake, said during debate earlier this month on the House floor. “We know they list people that are dead who are not dead. When you give due process, that's how people survive being removed from the voting rolls instead of being removed unlawfully from them. It will lead to lawsuits. It violates constitutional protections.”
Additionally, the bill would eliminate a week of early voting from low-turnout elections such as primaries and runoffs, cutting it from 17 to 10 days.
Republicans said that will lessen the administrative costs and complications for counties without meaningfully making elections worse — such as by causing longer lines — since few people vote in those elections anyway.
Democrats fear it’s the prelude to a bigger GOP goal of slashing or even eliminating early voting for all elections. Historically, Democratic voters are more likely to vote during early voting, while Republican voters are more likely to vote on Election Day.
The bill likewise gives more time for candidates or others to challenge ballots cast during early voting, and try to get them disqualified, but doesn’t apply the same rules to ballots cast on Election Day.
Rubin said the only reason for that change is to clear the way for yet more challenges like the one over the state Supreme Court seat in 2024, when GOP Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin attempted to throw out more than 60,000 voters’ ballots in his ultimately failed effort to overturn his loss that year to Democratic Justice Allison Riggs.
“You now have the ability — we could call it the Griffin Rule — where you can actually wait to see the preliminary results of an election, see if maybe you need to get some changes made, and then file challenges to early votes after that,” Rubin said, predicting what would happen if the bill becomes law.
He added: “That's actually really dangerous. You don't want candidates strategically filing challenges just to try and win an election. We should win elections at the ballot box, not in the courtroom.”