What is wrong with Election Laws in North Carolina?
*Voter Lists are still corrupt. Corrupt voter lists are a primary enabling factor for election fraud. Approximately 14% (one million registrants) on the official NC voter list have been identified as likely ineligible registrants. Many have moved, are duplicated, have died, are non-citizens, or are convicted felons. There is no statutory requirement to remove duplicate registrants from the statewide voter registration list. Local Boards of Election are prohibited by the State Board from accepting citizen affidavits challenging corrupt entries on the voter lists. The NCGA should direct NCSBE to implement a uniform method for accepting citizen affidavits challenging ineligible and duplicate registrants, to include providing a reasonable format for submission, prescribing the evidence that is required and establishing the time periods that citizen inputs will be accepted for action by local Boards of Election The NCSBE and DMV should be directed to begin using the Electronic Verification of Vital Events (EVVE) on-line database to validate citizenship for new registrants that cannot produce a birth certificate or passport, as is practiced in other states. NCSBE should be directed to require SSN-4 or Driver’s License number for those 434,000 current registrants missing that federally required info, when they present to vote.’
*Mail-in voting is exploited. ballot harvesting is rampant in NC, particularly in the metro areas. There are few controls for mail-in voting. Citizens are denied inspection of postal facilities; mail-in ballots have little chain of custody enforcement; and observers are denied inspection of ballot envelopes during board of election acceptance meetings. The challenge period for mail-in ballots lasts just a few hours making it almost impossible to gather evidence and submit the challenge of known improper mail-in ballots. The NCGA should direct NCSBE to allow partisan observers to participate in all meetings where mail-in ballots are accepted, to include inspection of the ballot envelopes for completeness, signature presence, and voter/address verification (as is done for all in-person voting at polling places vis-à-vis the authorization to vote) prior to the mail-in ballots being accepted and tabulated.
*Same Day Registration (SDR) & Voting is abused. Thousands of voters show up to register and vote the same day during early voting. They are permitted to vote a regular ballot- which is immediately scanned and counted -without address verification. USPS address verification fails for many of these newly registered voters, but their votes were already counted and they remain on the voter list. S747 attempted to allow use of USPS for address verification prior to counting SDR votes. A federal judge struck that provision from being enforced. This means SDR voters are exempt from the address verification required of all other voters. For that reason alone, NCGA should order elimination of SDR as an option, consistent with all other Southern states.
*There is no capability to effectively audit election results. Citizens lack confidence in reported election results because: (a) there is no legitimate audit of election records; (b) because machines are not accessible for inspection; and (c) because observers are denied access to the machine audit logs, cast vote records (CVRs), ballot envelopes, authorizations to vote, early vote applications, and other election artifacts needed to validate election results. NCGA should pass H770 (authorizing public access to Cast Vote Records), order an independent election audit process - preferably directed by the state auditor - that has the NCSBE and County BOEs gather artifacts, then perform a uniform process for a post-election tabulation audit using representatives of the major parties prior to certification of each election.
*The state Constitution and Statutes are ambiguous as to whether U.S. Citizenship is required to vote. Article VI Suffrage & Eligibility to Office, does not specify U.S. Citizenship being required to vote. The NCGA should eliminate the Constitutional ambiguity by amending the language to require U.S. Citizenship for suffrage. This should be in the form of a simple Constitutional Amendment.
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