Editor’s note: Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is the 75th governor of North Carolina. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
As the country grapples with former President Donald Trump being indicted over election interference, the nationwide Republican war on democracy is raging fiercely in North Carolina. Right-wing Republicans in our state are responding with an attack on free elections. Using the “big lie” of election fraud as cover, Republicans in North Carolina — ironically a state that Trump won — are moving to limit access to the ballot box and sow chaos in our election certification process.
These sinister efforts aren’t new, and we’ve stopped many of them before in the state. But now, emboldened by the former president’s lies, Republicans here are back at it. Only this time, they’re armed with a legislative supermajority and a court system stacked with ultra-partisan Republican judges. North Carolinians and people across the country must take heed.
One of the GOP’s most pernicious bills is a blatant attempt to entrench its power further by targeting young and nonwhite voters who tend to vote more often for Democrats. I recently vetoed this bill. However, Republicans have pledged to use their veto-proof legislative supermajority to override my veto.
The bill would shorten the time an absentee ballot can be accepted and aims to require an unreliable and unworkable “signature match” in certain counties and make it too easy for absentee ballots to get thrown out for minor errors.
Jim Womack, longtime North Carolina Republican and leader of the Election Integrity Network, admitted the goal was to have fewer people voting; he told local media, “There was an argument that said it’s a good thing for conservatives if more people vote. I fundamentally disagree with that.” Now they’ve said the quiet part out loud. And they aren’t stopping there.
Another bill that was introduced in June is perhaps even more dangerous because of its deceptive packaging. It would change the structure of the state and county boards of elections in a backdoor attempt to limit early voting and consolidate the Legislature’s quest for the power to decide contested elections. The scheme would establish an even split of Democrats and Republicans on these boards, which sounds innocuous but hides serious harm.
Currently, the county and state boards are split 3-2, with the party of the governor holding a majority as required by our constitution. This wasn’t a problem for Republicans when we had a Republican governor, but since my election in 2016, Republicans have been unceasing in their attempts to wrest that constitutional authority. Here’s how their plan works.
Right now, local county boards of elections set the number and placement of early voting sites, and if they can’t agree unanimously, the final decision is made by the five-member State Board of Elections by majority vote. Under the Republicans’ new bill, if the State Board of Elections were to deadlock on a county’s early voting plan — which is likely under a 4-4 split — then the plan reverts to just one early voting site in that county.
This would severely cripple early voting. In 2016, 2.9 million North Carolinians used early voting, with just 1.5 million people voting on Election Day. Wake County has more than 800,000 registered voters. Mecklenburg County has over 770,000. Imagine the difficulty of running an orderly, efficient early vote period with just one site. Or consider rural counties, where voters would have to drive long distances to vote early.
Republicans have tried this exact trick before — not once, but twice. First, their plan for even partisan boards of elections in 2017 was struck down by the state Supreme Court. So, in 2018 they tried to amend the state constitution. Despite rosy-sounding ballot language, voters gave a resounding “no,” with 62% rejecting this harmful idea.
And here’s potentially the biggest threat inside this Trojan horse. Deadlock at the State Board of Elections means contested elections and electoral disputes can be decided by the supermajority Republican Legislature and the highly partisan Republican majorities in our appellate courts. Of the states Trump won in 2020, North Carolina was the closest. In 2024, it’s not hard to imagine a narrow Joe Biden victory that is overturned by right-wingers in the Legislature or the courts when there is gridlock at the State Board of Elections.
The dangers of these bills reach far beyond the borders of our state. And if past is prologue, it’s not long before Republicans in other states launch similar attacks. For years, on matters from anti-LGBTQ legislation to technologically diabolical gerrymandering, we’ve seen legislatures around the country moving to copy right-wing legislation out of North Carolina.
In this case that means finding ways to exploit our election laws on both ends —making it harder to vote and easier to create turmoil in the election certification process. For all the right-wing fearmongering about near nonexistent election fraud, the truth is that they’re the ones using the long arm of the law to rig elections and threaten our democracy. We can’t let them get away with it.