Last week, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Senate passed legislation that seeks to enhance the integrity of the state’s elections.
SB 747 includes numerous changes to state election laws that have been long-supported by election integrity activists. Among them 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 in elections and mandates a process for removing noncitizens from voter rolls.
The measure is expected to be considered by the House Committee on Election Law and Campaign Finance Reform in the coming weeks.
During the amendment process, however, the Senate gutted many provisions included in the original version of SB 747, which election integrity activists argue were “vitally important” in closing loopholes “that will allow ballot, voter, and election fraud to occur in North Carolina.”
“As introduced, S.B. 747 was a step in the right direction for election integrity,” Ken Cuccinelli, the chair of the Election Transparency Initiative (ETI), said in a statement. “It’s profoundly disappointing that instead of addressing the bill’s shortcomings, it was gutted by the Senate and regrettably reverses or greatly reduces the effectiveness of a few worthy provisions.”
An ETI press release contends that some of SB 747’s existing deficiencies are centered around a lack of protections for poll observers, as well as no “allowance for citizens to provide affidavits or other evidence to local boards of elections (BOEs)
