Old North News

Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of Election Transparency Initiative (ETI), criticized Senate Bill 747 for lacking several ballot and voter integrity measures that the group believes are key to election reforms and transparency. Cuccinelli specifically urged Speaker Tim Moore, Elections Committee Chairman Rep. Grey Mills and Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Destin Hall to make election integrity a top priority and utilize the veto-proof majority that the Republicans currently hold in the General Assembly.

“At a time when the General Assembly has a veto proof majority, Republicans should be passing the strongest bill possible,” Cuccinelli said in a statement. “We call on Speaker Tim Moore and his leadership team, Elections Committee Chairman Grey Mills and Rules Chairman Destin Hall to help restore badly needed faith in our elections by immediately making election integrity a top priority.”

According to a release by ETI, while the bill contains a number of provisions that they believe will help support free, transparent and accountable elections in North Carolina, but lacked several "key ballot and voter integrity elements."

"In drafting Senate Bill 747, the North Carolina Senate began the important process of closing loopholes in our election laws that open the door for election fraud," Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team (NCEIT), said. "However, many more features are needed, such as protections for poll observers, prohibition of private barcoding on ballot request forms, acceptance of citizen affidavits challenging voter list errors and making cast vote records publicly available as they are in 28 other states."

The NCEIT is an in-state group that is seeking to establish a trusted, statewide infrastructure of county election integrity task forces with trained and certified individuals. One of the organization's stated goals is to "observe, report and adjudicate every voting and election irregularity so citizens will find it easy to vote, but very hard to cheat."

ETI enumerates several deficiencies that they see in SB 747, including no protections for poll observers to perform their duties as prescribed by law, no allowance for citizens to provide affidavits or other evidence to local boards of election, no requirement for voters using same-day registration and voters to be issued a provisional ballot pending address verification, allowance for ballot "curing" of mail-in ballot envelopes for acceptance after poll closure, among several others.

ETI further recommended several additions to the bill that they believe the General Assembly needs to make to strengthen the bill, including applying Election Day voting provisions to early voting, strengthening list maintenance requirements, prohibiting sharing of proprietary, non-public election data with private entities like the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), among several other policy suggestions.

According to a report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation, North Carolina ranked eighth in number of deceased voters, but leads the U.S. in deceased registered voters credited for voting after death.

Additionally, according to ETI, as many as 14% of NC's voters, roughly one million people, have been identified as duplicates or ineligible.