The North Carolina General Assembly successfully overrode Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of several Republican-backed election bills on Tuesday, marking a major win for activists concerned about the integrity of the state’s electoral system.
Upon their passage by North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature within the past two months, SB 747 and SB 749 were promptly vetoed by Cooper. When announcing his veto of SB 747, the Democrat governor baselessly accused state Republicans of orchestrating “an all-out assault on the right to vote” and falsely claimed their legislation makes it “harder for [residents] to vote” and encourages “voter intimidation.”
Contrary to Cooper’s unsubstantiated accusations, SB 747 includes numerous provisions strengthening the integrity of North Carolina’s elections system. Among the changes to state law are requirements that election records be retained for 22 months after an election and all mail-in ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day. The bill additionally bans the acceptance and use of private money, or “Zuckbucks,” in elections and mandates a process for removing noncitizens from voter rolls.
During the 2020 election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which in turn poured these “Zuckbucks” into local election offices in battleground states around the country, changing how elections were administered. The funds were ultimately used to expand unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, these grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties,
