Both Republican members of NC Board of Elections resign day after election settlement
Both Republican members of the North Carolina State Board of Elections resigned Wednesday night, citing their concerns over a legal settlement on mail-in voting.
David Black and Ken Raymond’s resignations come 41 days before the Nov. 3 general election — an important stretch of time, as last-minute decisions are still being made that will affect the election.
There are usually five members on the board, with a 3-2 split in favor of the political party that controls the governor’s office — currently the Democrats. All five members, including Black and Raymond, had agreed to the proposed settlement of a lawsuit over mail-in voting earlier this week.
However, a day after North Carolina’s top Republican lawmakers fiercely criticized that settlement, Black and Raymond announced their immediate resignations.
“We appreciate their service to the State Board, particularly the knowledge and perspective they provided from their years of service as members of county boards of elections,” said Patrick Gannon, the Board of Elections spokesman.
The state elections board will now temporarily be made up of only Democrats, until the N.C. Republican Party nominates replacements. Michael Whatley, chairman of the NCGOP, said in an interview Thursday morning that the party is already vetting people for the job and hopes to get Republicans back on the board as soon as possible.
He said that for each of the two now-empty seats, the NCGOP will send three names to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, and Cooper will make the final picks from those names.
In a letter to Whatley Thursday, Cooper asked him to have the names in by Monday.
Controversy over settlement
On Tuesday, the elections board announced it had tentatively reached a settlement with an advocacy group representing retirees that had sued over the state’s various rules for mail-in voting. The group is represented by Marc Elias, a nationally prominent Democratic attorney involved in many voting rights cases.
If approved by a judge, the settlement will create new rules to make it easier for people to fix mistakes on their mail-in ballots. It also would extend the amount of time after the election that absentee ballots could come in and still be counted, and allow for the creation of special drop boxes that voters could use instead of mailing in their ballots.
Despite the elections board’s unanimous agreement to the settlement, North Carolina’s top GOP lawmakers say it could open the door to voter fraud, and that it would undo key parts of bipartisan changes to election rules passed earlier this summer.
Democrats more likely to vote by mail
There are also political considerations: Mail-in voting in North Carolina has so far been much more popular with Democrats than Republicans. So making it easier for voters to fix mistakes on mail-in ballots, to prevent those ballots from being thrown out, would more likely favor Democratic candidates.
Democrats make up 36% of all voters in North Carolina, but they’re 55% of the voters requesting mail-in ballots so far. Republicans are 30% of all voters but only 16% of the mail-in ballot requests.
Whatley said he believes the settlement was just a way for Democrats to give themselves an advantage.
“You have Democratic plaintiffs suing a Democratic majority board, and then reaching a settlement,” he said.
Damon Circosta, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said it was actually just to give voters certainty.
“Our board, both Democrats and Republicans, agreed unanimously to make these commonsense changes to our process amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said when the settlement was announced. “We have ensured that our election process is secure and accessible.”
A recent study of data from the 2018 elections found that around 6,000 North Carolina voters, out of 104,000 who voted by mail, had their ballots rejected.
That study, conducted by WRAL and ProPublica, found that Black voters were more than twice as likely as white voters to have mail-in ballots rejected in 2018 — and that “So far, 2020 shows a similar pattern.”
Why GOP members resigned
Raymond, a Winston-Salem man who’s been on the board since 2018, said he couldn’t continue serving because he felt he was misled during the settlement proceedings.
Raymond accused state government lawyers under N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein of not telling elections board members that some of the things the board agreed to do were previously denied in other recent lawsuits.
“It is impossible to have true bipartisanship when both sides of the political aisle do not have the important and vital information needed to make the right decisions,” Raymond said in his resignation letter.
Stein, a Democrat, said such accusations are intended to create confusion and distrust in the elections.
“This is political theater at its most destructive,” Stein told The News & Observer in a written statement. “The Republican Party needs to start respecting democracy, instead of undermining it.”
Black, of Concord, had a lengthy list of objections to board actions related to this year’s election — not only about the settlement but also other decisions that have been made since he joined the board Jan. 31, 2019.
“I can only offer that I did my best to act to reach consensus to make sensible decisions while knowing that the vote most likely would end up 3-2,” Black wrote in his resignation letter. “These recent decisions have made it untenable for me to remain as member.”
Gannon, in his statement, said lawyers briefed all the board members “before and during last week’s closed session meeting,” before the vote to approve the settlement.
“The agency’s legal staff, who are civil servants, provide thorough legal memos to the board prior to every board meeting and answer any questions board members have about matters that come before the board,” the statement said.
It’s unclear if Black or Raymond asked any questions during that meeting, or if they asked any GOP leaders for advice in the week between that meeting and when they voted to approve the settlement. Whatley, the party chairman, said he wasn’t consulted.
“We read about it in the paper just like everybody else,” he said.
Whatley said he believes this settlement actually violates state law, and he hopes it’s not approved. A hearing is scheduled next week for a judge to decide whether to approve it.
Surge in mail voting
Mail-in voting is expected to increase dramatically this year because of coronavirus health concerns.
With more than a month still to go until Election Day, more than 170,000 North Carolinians have already voted by mail — nearly as many as in all of 2016. And nearly 1 million voters have requested a ballot by mail.
The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is still a month away, on Oct. 27.
Under current rules, mail-in ballots wouldn’t be counted unless they are both postmarked on or before Election Day, Nov. 3, and also received by state officials within three days — by Nov. 6. This settlement would push that final date back to Nov. 12, giving nearly an extra week for ballots to arrive.
The other changes, to let people fix errors on their mail-in ballots, mean that for many of the most common errors people can make, they wouldn’t have to request a new ballot and start from scratch.
Instead, officials would ask them to sign an affidavit with the missing information.
N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican from Rockingham County, said he fears the changes could invite fraud by letting people essentially skirt the state’s requirements for having a witness to vote by mail.
“If approved, this action shatters confidence in the Board of Elections’ intent to fairly conduct this election,” Berger said in a press release after the settlement was announced Tuesday.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 10:58 PM with the headline "Both Republican members of NC Board of Elections resign day after election settlement."
