North Carolina elections officials express concern over pending voting bills

North Carolina elections officials are responding to Republican-sponsored bills in the House and Senate whose stated purpose is to enhance election integrity.

House Bill 772, first introduced in April, is titled Poll Observer Appointments, Access & Activity. Among the 19 new provisions is allowing up to a dozen partisan observers free access to voting enclosures at any time, permission to record their interactions with poll workers, as well as voter intake paperwork — minus voter or ballot images. 

In a July letter sent to House and Senate leaders by the Election Boards Association of North Carolina, seven incumbent executive committee members and over two dozen of its longest-serving county board members caution against these changes among others. The letter states that the increased level of activity at polling places would be disruptive, impossible to supervise, and raise new concerns about secure and secret balloting.

State Board of Elections officials quickly responded to another proposal in the Senate which made various elections-related changes. They expressed concerns over how the multiple-ID provisions outlined in the bill would be administered and suggested that the provision would likely disenfranchise many same-day registration voters. Among their many other concerns are how the newly proposed signature verification program will be funded, and technology hurdles involved with proposed two-factor authentication for absentee ballots.

In North Carolina, of the 5.5 million votes cast in the 2020 general election, there were a total of 70 voter fraud cases referred to prosecutors stemming from the 2020 general election. Not all led to prosecutions.