Sunday voting disputes highlight political divides at NC elections board
North Carolina elections officials took a series of votes Tuesday that highlighted political divides on the State Board of Elections, and among county-level elections officials, as a lawsuit looms that could upend how elections rules are decided.
Front-and-center were political fights over early voting and, in particular, Sunday voting. In the background: A lingering power struggle over the administration of the state’s elections.
Republicans in North Carolina have, for more than a decade, tried cutting down on early voting availability. They particularly object to Sunday voting. The day has been broadly adopted by liberal political groups that encourage Black voters — who lean overwhelmingly Democratic — to go vote after church services on Sunday mornings, a tactic often called “souls to the polls.”
Past GOP efforts to cut down on Sunday voting have been struck down in court as unconstitutional for racial discrimination. But divisions remain. And those divisions were in stark contrast again Tuesday, as the state board finalized early voting plans for all 100 counties ahead of this fall’s elections.
“I never support Sunday voting,” said Kevin Lewis, one of the board’s Republican members.
“I am 100% for Sunday voting,” said Jeff Carmon, one of the board’s Democratic members.
Lewis, Carmon and the rest of the State Board of Elections heard from leaders of a dozen counties at Tuesday’s meeting where local elections officials couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on their early voting plans and needed the state board to make the decision for them. Nearly every dispute involved Sunday voting; some disagreements also revolved around how many early voting polling places to offer, or where to put them.
In almost all of the disputes, the votes broke down — at the county level and at the state level — along party lines. In the end the Democratic plans all prevailed, since Democrats control a 3-2 majority on the State Board of Elections.
Republican state lawmakers have been trying to change that power dynamic for years, saying it hurts voter confidence in elections when one party controls decisions over the rules for elections. They’re pushing for an evenly split board, and to give themselves more control over it. Democrats respond that Republicans never raised that concern when Republicans controlled the elections board, accusing the GOP of attempting a partisan power grab to try to tilt the balance of power in this key swing state.
A lawsuit over the legality of that GOP plan is pending; Democrats have won so far in early stages of the case, but the Republican-led North Carolina Supreme Court is expected to have the final say.
Political divide on the board
The State Board of Elections, like all 100 county elections boards, has five members: Three from the political party that controls the governor’s office, currently the Democratic Party, and two from the biggest other political party, currently the Republican Party.
Republican state lawmakers have long tried — often successfully — to weaken the power of the governor’s office. But one area they’ve failed multiple times is in elections administration.
After Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper was elected in 2016 the legislature passed laws changing the composition of the Board of Elections, to get rid of Democrats’ new 3-2 majority, but were shot down by the North Carolina Supreme Court, which found violations of the state constitution. So Republicans then suggested changing the state constitution. They put their plan on the ballot in 2018 as a constitutional amendment. Although voters approved three other constitutional amendments on the ballot that year, they shot down that amendment.
Then in 2023 Republicans took control of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Later that year Republican legislators passed yet another law to take away the governor’s control over the State Board of Elections.
Despite similar ideas having recently been ruled unconstitutional, as well as rejected by voters at the ballot box, Republican legislative leaders said they trusted the new Republican Supreme Court majority to rule in their favor and allow the changes to go into effect. They pointed to a dissent written in one of the previous cases by Paul Newby, a Republican who’s now the court’s chief justice.
The court’s new GOP majority has also already reversed past precedents in other high-profile election law cases — over voter identification and gerrymandering — in rulings seen as key victories for the Republican Party ahead of this year’s elections.
On Monday legislative leaders formally asked the Supreme Court to fast-track the case over who should control elections, allowing it to skip the North Carolina Court of Appeals and potentially be resolved in months rather than years. A decision is expected as soon as this week — leaving open the possibility that the case could be resolved before the 2024 elections.
In the meantime, the State Board of Elections has moved to act quickly itself. In years past the board has required counties to finish their early voting plans by August or September. This year the board’s Democratic chairman, Alan Hirsch, moved the deadline up to May 7, with the final vote on any disputed plans held Tuesday, at the start of June.
Republicans accused Democrats of changing that deadline for partisan reasons, to fast-track its decisions before the Supreme Court could get involved.
Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting the state and national Republican Parties sent a memo raising concerns about the early voting plans in 20 counties around the state. Lewis cited those memos at Tuesday’s meeting, asking for a pause on all the decisions until later this summer to give more time to analyze the GOP claims.
The board’s Democratic members voted against doing so.
“It looks like a Hail-Mary pass to try to delay this decision,” said Siobhan Millen, one of the Democrats on the board.
Critics of the GOP plan to create evenly split boards say that it will lead to cases in which members of either political party could grind the system to a halt, since no early voting plans at all would be approved unless both parties could agree on the plan. Democrats could shut down voting options in heavily red counties; Republicans could shut down voting options in heavily blue counties.
Republican lawmakers acknowledged that’s a possibility. They’ve said they see it as a plus, if it might force both sides to work together to reach a compromise.
