North Carolina Legislature Passes Bill Easing Post-Election Vote Challenges; Stein Vows Veto

The Republican-led North Carolina House approved a bill Tuesday that would make it easier for residents to challenge other people's votes and for county boards to throw those ballots out, a change critics warn could produce post-election chaos.

The measure, passed by the state Senate last week, now goes to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who said Tuesday night that he will veto it.

Under the bill, any county resident could challenge early voters' ballots for up to three business days after an election. County election boards could then vote to invalidate those votes by a simple majority.

Current law requires that challenges to early votes be filed the same day the ballot is cast — before anyone knows how close a race is or how many votes would need to be discarded to change the outcome — and precinct officials decide the matter that day. Only absentee ballot challenges go to the county board. About 5% of North Carolina voters cast a ballot by mail in 2024.

County election boards are controlled by Republicans after state legislators stripped the governor of his appointment power and transferred it to state Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican.

In an interview, Stein invoked Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for the state Supreme Court in 2024 who challenged 60,000 votes after narrowly losing to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. The legal fight stretched on for six months after Election Day.

"What I'm worried about is Jefferson Griffin's lawsuit run wild," Stein said.

Republicans have argued the bill would strengthen state elections.

In other states, self-appointed fraud hunters have combed voter rolls and challenged registrations they believe are ineligible, often relying on commercial data that is less reliable than the databases election officials use. In Georgia in 2022, such challenges targeted at least 92,000 registrations. Most failed, but more than 5,700 registrations were removed or placed in pending or challenged status, requiring voters to update their information.

The 16-page bill would also cut primary early voting by a week and require a process for removing voters flagged as potentially ineligible in federal databases.

"If somebody's not eligible to vote, they shouldn't remain registered to vote," said state Rep. Phil Rubin, a Democrat. "These things should always have really rigorous due process components to them, and they should have a sort of minimum standard of evidence. We know a lot of those federal databases are incredibly unreliable."

The bill would additionally give the state auditor new powers to audit election results.

"The idea of having an auditor audit county boards of elections sounds innocuous, but it allows the auditor to pick and choose which boards he audits," Stein said, adding that it must be seen "in light of what the auditor has done to politicize the administration of elections in North Carolina."

NBC News reported in June that Boliek and his office were quietly working to shape counties' early voting plans, though critics argue there is no statutory authority for the auditor's office to influence county election administration.

"They've taken this, you know, longstanding statewide office that has frankly been not a particularly prominent or important part of North Carolina politics and turned it into arguably the most important statewide office in North Carolina," said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.