North Carolina elections board finalizes results from primary marked by new voter ID rules

North Carolina's primary election results earlier this month have been made official, with a handful of key incumbents losing and a few U.S. House and statewide nominee races now headed to runoffs.

The State Board of Elections voted unanimously on Tuesday to certify counts for scores of ballot items from March 5, including contested party races for president, governor, and other Council of State members, the congressional delegation, seats in the legislature, and judgeships. The board also authenticated vote totals for local and county races already certified by county boards. Winners advance to the general elections.

The primaries marked the first statewide election under rules stemming from a 2018 law requiring photo identification to vote and a 2023 law that moved up the deadline by which traditional absentee ballots must be turned in to count.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly enacted both laws. Roughly 1,600 ballots ultimately weren't counted under those laws, according to state election data, compared with 1.8 million ballots that were counted statewide.

The board also formalized runoffs on May 14 for the 13th U.S. House District GOP nomination between Kelly Daughtry and Brad Knott; the Republican primary for lieutenant governor between Hal Weatherman and Jim O’Neill; and the GOP nomination for state auditor between Jack Clark and Dave Boliek. The runoff winners face Democratic rivals in the fall. Second-place primary finishers can ask for a runoff when the leading candidate fails to receive more than 30% of the vote.

In other statewide races, current Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt lost her GOP primary to Michele Morrow. And for the General Assembly, results show that Democratic Sen. Mike Woodard of Durham County; Democratic Rep. Michael Wray of Northampton County; and Republican Reps. George Cleveland of Onslow County and Kevin Crutchfield of Cabarrus County lost their primaries.

Crutchfield filed an election protest that was rejected unanimously by the Cabarrus board on Monday. Crutchfield, whose protest doesn't allege voting irregularities, said he will appeal to the state board. The margin between Crutchfield and his Republican rival is outside the threshold for an automatic recount.

While legal rulings meant photo voter ID under the 2018 law began with last fall's municipal elections, the primary was its first statewide implementation.

Under the voter ID law, someone who can't show a qualifying ID casts a provisional ballot. That person then must either fill out an ID exception form or return to their county board office with their ID before the county canvass for their ballot to count.

The state board said Tuesday that 1,185 voters cast provisional ballots related to the voter ID requirement, from which 708 were fully or partially counted. Of the 477 that weren’t counted, 87% were set aside because voters didn’t return to the county board with their ID.

Voting analysts for Democracy North Carolina, a voter advocacy group opposed to the voter ID law, said this week that they're still waiting for fuller primary data to review.

Based on evidence from the municipal elections, Democracy North Carolina remains concerned that local election workers may have been inconsistent at offering voters exception forms that they were qualified for to fill out, said Carol Moreno, the group’s policy and programs manager. The result, she said, would be more voters facing travel, work and child care obstacles to return to county board offices with IDs.

State data also shows that 1,128 absentee ballots weren’t counted because they reached election officials after primary-day polls closed at 7:30 p.m. A 2023 law eliminated the previous three-day grace period for ballots that are postmarked by the day of the election.

In the March 2020 primary, under the old rules, 800 ballots missed the deadline and weren’t counted, according to the state board.

Republican legislators have said the deadline change would promote confidence in election results. Common Cause North Carolina urged the legislature on Tuesday to reinstate the grace period, saying it ensures voters who rely on the mail to vote won’t be disenfranchised by postage delays beyond their control.

One General Assembly elections policymaker sounded initially satisfied with how the laws were carried out.

“Preliminary results show that 99.9% of voters cast their ballot in accordance with state law, and there’s been no indication voting was more difficult this year than in the past,” Republican Sen. Warren Daniel of Burke County, a co-chairman of the Senate elections committee, said in a statement Monday. “We will monitor updates as they come along, but the early figures point toward North Carolina’s election integrity laws working as intended — making it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

But Moreno said that even a scattering of failed opportunities by otherwise qualified voters to cast ballots can affect the outcomes of close elections, she said.

“That’s a number that can make a difference in an election,” she said. “That is very clearly a barrier that is being created that wasn’t there before.”

The statewide voter primary turnout was 24.1% of registered voters, which is lower than the March 2020 primary turnout of 31.2%.