Earlier in July, the Center for Election Confidence (CEC) submitted four comments to the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE or Board) concerning rules proposed to reform the state’s absentee ballot, photo ID, recount, and voting site selection procedures. CEC is pleased that NCSBE adopted many of CEC’s recommendations in the final draft version of each rule and thanks the Board for its diligent review.
Absentee Ballot Deficiencies:
NCSBE incorporated several of CEC’s most important substantive recommendations into the adopted absentee-ballot rules. Most notably, the Board conformed the rules to the statutory “container-return envelope” terminology, clarified that cure attestations are the voter’s own attestations, expressly protected applications missing only a ZIP code, and substantially revised the serious-irregularity rule to prevent automatic staff cure and require county-board consideration. NCSBE also redirected ballots that a voter is not eligible to vote, and certain unsealed-ballot situations, into the non-curable spoil-and-reissue process.
NCSBE partially adopted CEC’s record-keeping recommendations by requiring documentation of receipt dates, deficiencies, irregularities, and telephone notice. CEC continues to encourage the Board to adopt CEC’s complete deficiency log, detailed record-content requirements, electronic-submission preservation provisions, objective opened-and-resealed criteria, actual-calendar-deadline notice requirement, penalty-of-perjury attestation, or explicit no-response rule.
Photo ID:
NCSBE incorporated one clear recommendation from CEC’s Photo ID comment. CEC asked the Board to clarify the proposed reference to the “meeting to count absentee ballots required under G.S. 163-234(12).” The agency-adopted rule now refers more specifically to the “final meeting to count cured absentee ballots as required by G.S. 163-234(12)” in all three relevant parts of 08 NCAC 17 .0109(c).
NCSBE otherwise retained the principal provisions CEC supported, including statutory deadline cross-references, reordered provisional-voting options, majority voting on exception-affidavit falsity, written factual findings, and advance notice, but those provisions were already in the proposed rules and should not be presented as changes made in response to CEC.
CEC continues to encourage the Board to adopt CEC’s recommendations requiring actual calendar dates in voter notices, detailed contents for written falsity decisions, documentation of notice attempts, written staff-disapproval records, voter-record contact information as a fallback in .0109(b), preservation and privacy rules for cure documentation, or complete county-board meeting records of final rejections.
Recounts:
NCSBE adopted several of CEC’s most important recommendations concerning recount completion and ballot duplication. The final rule requires written notice to candidates of the date and time a recount was declared complete, delivered by email or hand delivery within one hour. NCSBE also requires counties to choose one method for all tabulator-rejected ballots during a recount and notify parties and candidates of that choice in writing. For duplicated ballots, NCSBE adopted matching unique identifiers on the original and duplicate ballots and prohibited alteration of the voter’s selections on the original.
CEC continues to encourage the Board to adopt CEC’s proposed diligent-search and written-finding requirements before appointing unaffiliated or other-party recount officials. Nor did it adopt CEC’s recommendations for machine-personnel identification and logs, public observation language, duplication logs, numerical reconciliation and aggregate reporting, limiting duplication to the contest under recount, or clarifying quorum and disagreement procedures.
Voting Sites
NCSBE incorporated one clear recommendation from CEC’s Photo ID comment. CEC asked the Board to clarify the proposed reference to the “meeting to count absentee ballots required under G.S. 163-234(12).” The agency-adopted rule now refers more specifically to the “final meeting to count cured absentee ballots as required by G.S. 163-234(12)” in all three relevant parts of 08 NCAC 17 .0109(c).
NCSBE otherwise retained the principal provisions CEC supported, including statutory deadline cross-references, reordered provisional-voting options, majority voting on exception-affidavit falsity, written factual findings, and advance notice, but those provisions were already in the proposed rules and should not be presented as changes made in response to CEC.
CEC continues to encourage the Board to adopt CEC’s recommendations requiring actual calendar dates in voter notices, detailed contents for written falsity decisions, documentation of notice attempts, written staff-disapproval records, voter-record contact information as a fallback in .0109(b), preservation and privacy rules for cure documentation, or complete county-board meeting records of final rejections.
The final draft rules now move to the North Carolina Rules Review Commission for review before taking effect. CEC will continue to monitor the final draft rules as they move toward approval.