“Chaos”? Really?
You’ve got to give election reformers in the General Assembly credit for getting the attention of their liberal critics. Just read the headline from NBC News: “North Carolina elections at risk of chaos with Legislature’s proposed overhaul.”
The “chaos”-inducing measures NBC screams about are: 1) Giving Republicans and Democrats an equal say at the Board of Elections; 2) Allowing poll watchers to actually watch the polls; 3) Making Election Day the actual voting deadline; 4) Banning private funding of vote-counting; and 5) Requiring more authentication of absentee ballots.
The horror!
We’ll take each, briefly, in turn.
BOARD OF ELECTIONS
It seems to us that a pretty obvious way to improve trust in elections is to not put one party in charge of counting the votes.
NBC purports to be concerned about what happens in a “deadlock” at the Board of Elections. The reporter who wrote the story could’ve gotten a good sense of potential workarounds by taking a 10-minute subway ride from NBC’s headquarters to the NYC Board of Elections.
Yes, even New York City – where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a million to one – has an evenly divided Board of Elections!
ALLOWING POLL WATCHERS TO ACTUALLY WATCH THE POLLS
It’s the whole point of poll watching and has been a feature of American elections for centuries…
MAKING ELECTION DAY THE ACTUAL VOTING DEADLINE
It doesn’t seem all that confidence-inspiring when election night results show one winner and then, days later, election officials announce a different winner. This isn’t hard. There are deadlines.
And in 2020, Gov. Roy Cooper-appointed election officials secretly negotiated with the Democratic Party’s top lawyer to change those deadlines via a “settlement” agreement. That’s also not very confidence inspiring. Election Day should be the election deadline, period.
BANNING PRIVATE FUNDING OF VOTE-COUNTING
NBC, without quoting anybody and just referencing generic “Democrats,” describes this bill as “an ill-conceived proposal designed to appease base voters who believe President Donald Trump’s stolen lie.”
It’s really, really hard to understand a legitimate reason private groups should pay for vote-counting. That seems among the worst ideas ever conceived (“It’s time to count the votes in Wake County, sponsored by the Carolina Partnership for Reform!”).
REQUIRING MORE AUTHENTICATION OF ABSENTEE BALLOTS
Remember that time when North Carolina had to redo an entire congressional election because of absentee ballot fraud? We do, but we’re starting to think maybe we suffer from schizophrenia or something.
