NCSBE OKs photo ID rules critics say risk ballot rejection

On Thursday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted on a series of voting rules, including for photo ID, that critics say will make it easier for ballots to be thrown out.

The board voted 3-2 along party lines, with Republican members voting yes and Democrats no, to revise the Absentee and In-Person Voting Photo ID Rules, exactly as they did at their April meeting.

When the rules were originally adopted, the deadline for a voter to return with their photo ID to the county board office if one wasn’t presented at the time of voting was changed from 5pm the day before the canvas to noon on the Friday after Election Day. The first revision would just point to the statute on the rule in case the deadline changes in the future.

The second change involves how votes are counted in-person with a provisional ballot. A voter could say that they would return with their photo ID and vote provisionally. A second option is for a voter to fill out a photo ID exception form and vote provisionally. The rules structure before the exception form was first followed by showing your ID. The revised version just changes the order.

The final change involves when a county board finds a photo ID exception form to be false. The current rule requires a unanimous vote. The revised rule would change it to a majority vote, and a majority of the board would be required to initiate the process with the voter by sending them a notice.

Adam Steele, associate general counsel for the board, said there were some small tweaks, including one small technical change for the absentee voting rule to make it more clear that if a photo ID is not readable, they have until the cure deadline to cure that and then also if a voter with an absentee ballot submits a photo ID exception form with their ballot at some point, they need to be given an opportunity to address the board if the board is considering their form to be false. He also said there were other small tweaks.

During the public comment period, the board received 1,506 comments on its website, 161 pages of email comments, six comments that were mailed in, and comments from a public comment hearing.

Democrat member Siobhan Millen asked Steele if most of the comments were directed toward the change of ruling from unanimous to majority for a county board to agree that a photo ID exception form is false, to which he replied yes.

“I think that concern is well founded that if a majority is going to vote as a bloc a lot and that is going to make these photo ID debates at the county level into a very partisan vote,” Millen said. “And I think that’s highly destructive to voters trust in elections, so I think we’re opening ourselves up to potential problems.”

Republican board member Angela Hawkins spoke about her experience during her time on the Wake County Board of Elections reviewing possibly thousands of the forms, and said that it’s very difficult to find falsity in what someone says. She said she did a recent review of almost 200 provisional exception forms and nothing indicated why four of the forms were denied.

“So, I think we’ll find if we do adopt this rule that we’re going to go with the majority to find falsity that very little will change by way of the exception forms that our citizens are issuing,” she said.

Democrat member Jeff Carmon said that the change in rule frightens him because it supports a lie.

“There’s not significant voter fraud in our state, and by making this rule to make it majority instead of unanimous, it feeds into that lie, that there’s a ton of voter fraud,” he said. “Some of the comments were very hurtful towards people who are disabled, people who may be financially in a bad position, and that’s not what our state is about. And if we’re going to keep moving down that road that follows, I would say, a national movement, I think we need to really be careful as well as being prepared for the blowback as we continue to do what appears to be an agenda throughout the country.”

Board member and secretary Stacey “Four” Eggers IV said the unanimous requirement was adopted by a numbered memo, and was not put forth for rules and was not reviewed by the Rules Review Commission for compliance with the statute.

“The text of the statute relating to the photo ID exception form does not require a unanimous requirement,” he told board members. “That is something that was invented out of whole cloth by this board. I was in the minority when that numbered memo was adopted and did not believe that was faithful to the text of the statute and appreciate the rule as proposed as being consistent with the statute, and I believe the Rules Review Commission will agree with that.”

The board voted unanimously in favor of permanent revisions to recount rules, which included new procedures for handling ballots that cannot be read by tabulators, but again voted along party lines, 3-2 for the adoption of Voting Site Rules, with Republican members voting yes and Democrat members voting no.

The first rule was on the definitions, defining a voting site as the property or a portion of the property under the possession and control of the county board of elections wherever the voting place is located.

The second deals with voting site buffer zones and curbside zones. It deals with walkways and having a curbside voting area for people who aren’t physically able to go inside a voting site.

The third refers to the electioneering zone and allowing the chief judge at the voting site to make adjustments to a boundary of the zone so people have access along the walkway to enter the building to vote.

The fourth and most controversial among Carmon and Millen is the voting site conduct rule. According to Steele, it would mean that the noise restriction and restriction on sound amplification devices only applies to people who are actually at the voting site creating an ongoing noise that can be heard within the voting closure, unlike previously where, as an example, it could have been applied to people across the street making a lot of noise.

“I just wonder if the party to the polls were playing the Village People’s ‘YMCA,’ would we be here having this question about people being disturbed while voting because this is no longer with this rule,” Carmon said. “We are discouraging people from being excited about voting, and we’re dealing with the younger population that’s excited, that want to show their enthusiasm. And I feel like we as a board are taking steps to dampen that enthusiasm.”

Millen said the rules were an overreaction to a few people’s complaints.

“It’s up to us to use our judgment about whether we’re going to automatically do what people suggest we do or use our judgment to see if the solution is worse than the problem,” she said. “I still think it’s suppressive and repressive of the right of speech, and it’s vague. It puts a lot of subjectivity into the equation.”

Eggers stated that as someone who has worked in the county level of administration of elections, there are times at which the chief judge is called upon to maintain the order and decorum within a precinct, and this provides tools consistent with the statute for them for them to do so.

The rules now go before the Rules Review Commission for approval.

“NCSBE OKs photo ID rules critics say risk ballot rejection” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.