North Carolina Elections Just Got a Lot Better

The future bodes well for election integrity in North Carolina. Innovative Republicans fixed the problematic Board of Elections (BOE), while the Justice Department is breathing down its neck to fix the problems its former Democrat members created.

Over the past five years, the Democrat-controlled BOE usurped the legislature's authority, ignored federal election law, and discriminated against Republican-majority counties rather than act as "independent state agency charged with the administration of the elections process and campaign finance disclosure and compliance," as state law prescribes.

Last year, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a much-needed election law over outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper's (D) veto, which—among other reforms—removed BOE appointment authority from the governor to the state auditor. Newly elected Auditor Dave Boliek (R) replaced four of the five former BOE members, and the new Republican majority appointed former libertarian think tank leader Francis De Luca as its chairman.

In May, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state and the BOE for failing to maintain an accurate voter roll and verify citizenship information in accordance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002. This followed the unsuccessful attempt by Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin (R) to challenge over 60,000 possibly fraudulent votes from people who didn't provide either the last four digits of their Social Security numbers or driver's license number. Griffin lost his election to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D) by less than 800 votes.

In response, the BOE's new Executive Director Sam Hayes stated, “The failure to collect the information required by HAVA has been well documented. Rest assured that I am committed to bringing North Carolina into compliance with federal law.”

Correcting Democrat Overreach

Republicans have rapidly gained on Democrats in North Carolina voter registration. When former President Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008, there were 864,253 more registered Democrats than Republicans. President Donald Trump won the state three times, and, today, only 21,559 registrations separate the parties. In light of Democrats' spiraling popularity, the state BOE went all in on maximizing ballot returns with as little oversight as possible—unless those ballots came from Republican-majority counties or third parties that could hurt Democrats' chances.

The BOE appointed Democrat Karen Brinson Bell as chairwoman a year before COVID-19 gave Democrats the pretense to upend election laws and rig the game in their favor. She did not sit this one out.

"She was a partisan actor when she was put in that place, and she acted on a partisan manner all along," said Senate leader Phil Berger (R). "And so, I am hopeful that the change we've made will see decisions made by the board based on what the law is, not what the board thinks the law should be."

Unilaterally Changing Election Laws

In 2020, Brinson Bell usurped the legislature's authority by implementing a settlement the BOE's lawyers agreed to without the legislature's input with Democrat attorney Marc Elias. It extended the state's three-day deadline for absentee ballots to nine days and allowed voters to sign an affidavit if there were issues with their witnesses rather than fill out a new ballot.

This amounted to a change in the state law without legislative approval. An appeals court voided the witness aspect of the rule after 350,000 North Carolinians had already case absentee ballots—to which the judge did not retroactively apply his ruling. Then, Supreme Court "conservative" Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh voted with the liberal minority not to hear the case, which kept the Brinson Bell rules in place for the razor-thin 2020 presidential election.

Banning Signature Matching to Verify the Integrity of Absentee Ballots

In 2022, the BOE refused to allow county elections board members to match voter registration signatures with signatures on absentee ballot requests if they noticed discrepancies. After usurping the legislative role during the previous election, the BOE's Democrats claimed they couldn't allow signature matching because the legislature had not specifically spelled that out as part of county board members' job description.

Stonewalling Third Parties to Avoid Hurting Democrats

Democrats loathe and fear third party spoilers and still haven't forgiven Jill Stein for allegedly costing Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In 2020, the BOE kept the Green Party off the ballot. It later had to pay the party's legal fees for "frivolous" and "unreasonable" intervention to keep it of the ballot in 2022. Not only did the BOE claim the Green Party's valid signatures were fraudulent and, ironically, from dead voters but Democrat operatives called Green Party voters and asked them to remove their signatures—obviously for the greater good of defeating Republicans.

But the BOE's partisan hacks didn't stop with the Green Party.

Months before the 2024 election, the BOE approved the conservative Constitution Party but, on a party-line vote, objected to Robert Kennedy's centrist We the People Party and Cornel West's far-left Justice for All Party, both of which Democrat strategists widely believed would siphon votes from then-candidate Joe Biden. The board finally approved Kennedy but rejected the socialist West—who was always more likely to draw votes away from Biden.

West's party received signatures from 17,000 North Carolinians—3,276  more than required by law to qualify for the ballot. However, despite refusing to allow county board members to match signatures for absentee ballots, the BOE concluded from signature verification that West's party had engaged in fraud.

To bolster their case, BOE staffers contacted the few dozen West supporters who said they wanted to retract their signatures on West's ballot access petition. Only 10 responded.

Unsatisfied, the BOE then randomly contacted 250 additional signers. Only 49 responded, and only 18 of those said they didn't sign.

West's party easily won in court. In his ruling, Judge Terrence Boyle noted the BOE “conducted one flawed survey and extrapolated its conclusions to the rest of the signatures.”

When Kennedy's party requested his name be withdrawn from the ballot after he endorsed Trump, the BOE refused, even though it had eight days before it had to start mailing absentee ballots.

Voter Suppression Against Hurricane Victims in Republican Areas

After Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, local Republicans tried to restore early voting locations in counties that lost locations due to flooding. But the BOE-appointed local board members refused. The legislature had to step in and force the county boards to provide rural voters equal access to early voting.

Brinson Bell ironically won an honor from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for getting polling places back up and running in western North Carolina.

(RELATED: Why are North Carolina Democrats Stopping Hurricane Helene Survivors from Voting Early?)

Violating Federal Law in Citizenship Verification

The root of the Justice Department's lawsuit—neglecting to offer legally valid voter registration forms to absentee voters—is the most egregious example of incompetence from the Democrat-led BOE. This could have resulted in hundreds of thousands of ineligible voters casting ballots over the past few election cycles.

Wake County Elections board member Greg Flynn, a Democrat, claims human error caused the discrepancy.

But election workers didn't overlook citizenship identification and voters didn't omit it by accident, because, until last year, voter registration forms made it look like entering a Social Security or driver's license number was optional.

North Carolina's election system is undergoing a transformative shift toward greater integrity and fairness, driven by Republican-led reforms and the DOJ lawsuit compelling compliance. The previous Democrat-controlled board did the bidding of the Elias Law Group and DNC to rewrite state election laws to favor Democrat voters and suppressed third-party candidates to help Democrat candidates. Hopefully, the new BOE will rebuild trust in the electoral process and equally serve all North Carolinian voters.

(READ MORE: Texas Voter Fraud Bust Shows How Elections Get Stolen)