A bill forbidding all-mail elections passed unanimously Wednesday, May 27, out of the House Elections and Ethics Law Committee. It’s heading to the House Rules Committee. House Bill 1169 eases some restrictions on absentee ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic, while also tightening oversight requirements and adding penalties for mail ballots cast illegally. Lawmakers introduced the...
A list of COVID-19 recommendations from the State Board of Elections is apt to hit a nerve with legislative Republicans. One recommendation would either reduce or eliminate the need for witness signatures on absentee ballots. Critics point out the recommendation comes after a large-scale absentee ballot harvesting scheme in the 2018 9th U.S. Congressional District...
N.C. lawmakers so far have spent two days huddled around computers in a garishly lit legislative committee room, working to fit the puzzle pieces in what will become newly redrawn congressional districts. An 18-member Joint Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting began laying out criteria for maps Tuesday, Nov. 5. Thursday, legislators were still hunched over...
If the General Assembly learned anything from recent decades of redistricting battles, it’s that the map-drawing process needs a thorough overhaul. The House Redistricting Committee discussed several proposed redistricting plans Thursday, Oct. 24, intending to make the process as nonpartisan as possible. A timeline regarding a committee vote doesn’t exist, and members adjourned without notice...
Rep. Darren Jackson, D-Wake, wants Republican leaders to take a polygraph. He says he’ll pay for it. Jackson, in a news conference Monday, Sept. 23, says a lie-detector test would prove the veracity of Republican claims about a controversial House vote overriding the governor’s budget veto. Or not. “There is no path forward for reconciliation...
One down. One to go. The House passed a new district map, and it’s on its way to the Senate. It was a grueling week. After a three-judge Superior Court panel handed down its ruling last week in Common Cause v. Lewis, the General Assembly had two weeks to pass new maps addressing partisan outliers...
It’s a classic “he said, he said.” While a majority of the Democratic caucus was absent, Speaker of the House Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 11 called for a vote to override the governor’s budget veto. Democratic lawmakers decry the move as partisan trickery. House Republicans call it a move of...
North Carolina lawmakers have just nine days to draw new voter district maps. They’re off to a rough start. A three-judge panel on Sept. 3 told Republican lawmakers to throw out their state legislative maps — which were subject to “extreme partisan gerrymandering”— and start over. House and Senate majority leaders aren’t happy with the...
Voting system approval in North Carolina is in for yet another delay. In a split vote, Thursday, Aug. 1, the State Board of Elections reaffirmed its decision to delay approving new voting machines until the board adopts new certification requirements. The delay has some board members worried about getting new election machines in place in...
North Carolina’s redistricting trial Common Cause v. Lewis concluded Friday with heightened tensions, a day after the court threw out part of the testimony of one of the General Assembly’s key witnesses. Discrediting the other side’s witnesses became a main theme for plaintiffs and defendants as the two-week trial wound down. Plaintiffs asked the court...
After slogging through a mass of statistical data and redistricting jargon, day three of Common Cause v. Lewis brought the court back to the fundamental questions: the constitutionality of Republicans’ gerrymandered maps and the legal implications of the controversial Hofeller files. Democratic legislative candidates have had to compete under Republican-gerrymandered maps since the 2012 elections....
