NC Republicans aren’t fooling anyone with dig at Durham elections

Despite Republicans’ claims over the last year, instances of voter fraud are incredibly rare. Maybe North Carolina Republicans haven’t gotten the memo.

On Thursday, state representative Jeff McNeely (R-Iredell) and a handful of other Republican state House members who call themselves “the Freedom Caucus” said they would select one of North Carolina’s 100 counties to inspect their voting machines and determine whether they were connected to the internet during the 2020 election. They “randomly selected” Durham County — a Democratic stronghold with large Black and Latino populations.

To this point, Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina have mostly resisted participating in sowing doubts about elections, unlike their colleagues in other states. Such talk threatens to undermine confidence in future elections, when the reality is that multiple safeguards ensure that elections are secure and accurate.

The State Board of Elections randomly audited 200 North Carolina precincts from both the 2020 Election Day and early voting, and found only 13 precincts had discrepancies between human and machine counts; each of these precincts had three or less votes affected.

The only instance of voter fraud in North Carolina since Republicans began raising the issue was in the 2018 midterms, when a previously elected Republican official was charged with absentee ballot fraud in Bladen County. Accusations of voter fraud in the 2016 gubernatorial election have resulted in a libel lawsuit against some Republican groups that could go to trial soon, and elections officials have made it clear that 2016 computer malfunctions in Durham County were the result of human error, not hackers.

McNeely and any North Carolina Republicans who continue to spread this misinformation are not for “freedom,” or upholding the U.S. and North Carolina constitutions as they claim to be. They are trying to stir doubts about elections that could leave the results vulnerable to the very political manipulation they say they are trying to root out.

Durham’s Board of Elections has told multiple outlets that this “inspection” will not be happening, as state elections director Karen Brinson Bell has already instructed local elections officials not to let members of the caucus examine voting machines during previous accusations. The state elections board has previously said lawmakers have no authority to open voting machines.

Durham County voters should have confidence in elections director Derek Bowens; there were only eight errors out of 57 precincts and more than 91,000 votes in the 2020 primary election. Thankfully, Durham representatives have defended the county’s elections processes to their peers in the General Assembly.

“I welcome the Freedom Caucus to come to Durham and watch a Durham Bulls game and stay away from our ballot boxes,” state Sen. Natalie Murdock tweeted.

N.C. House Democrats tweeted that “the allegation of voter fraud is a ridiculous, desperate plea for attention.”

One aspect of this ridiculousness can’t be overstated: Durham is one of 89 counties that uses hand-marked ballots for early voting and Election Day. Even counties that use ES&S ExpressVote Universal Voting System have a paper record produced and double-checked by people.

North Carolina Republicans don’t even need to bring up voter fraud allegations. Trump won the state by 74,483 votes. It would almost exclusively benefit them in the governor’s race, where incumbent Roy Cooper beat Republican nominee Dan Forest by more than 248,000 votes. Even if every single vote for Cooper from Durham County was tossed out, Cooper would still have more than 100,000 votes on Forest.

North Carolina’s Republican Party needs to understand the power it has to spread information, and condemn this kind of talk before it starts to fester. Stop trying to push the Big Lie.

This story was originally published October 11, 2021 at 2:08 PM with the headline "NC Republicans aren’t fooling anyone with dig at Durham elections."