'We're supporting a lie': NC elections board votes to throw out ballots more easily

It could soon be easier for North Carolina elections officials to throw out people’s ballots during the 2026 midterm elections and beyond, under new rules approved Thursday by the State Board of Elections.

The new changes, backed by the Republican majority on the State Board of Elections and opposed by the board's Democratic minority, make it easier for elections officials to reject people’s excuses for not having required voter identification. They'd also make it easier to kick people out of polling places, in addition to other changes.

The board also plans to vote Monday on similar rules making it easier to throw out mail-in ballots.

The rules aren't immediately official. After approval by the elections board they must also be approved by the state's Rules Review Commission  — which also has a Republican majority and which one of the election board's Republican members said Thursday will likely also sign off on the changes.

WRAL reported on the proposed changes earlier this year. Elections Director Sam Hayes, who took over last year after Republican state lawmakers gave their party control of elections administration by stripping that power from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, has previously said he wants to focus on efforts to improve voters’ confidence in election integrity.

Critics say the proposed changes would have the opposite effect — harming confidence in elections by making decisions, such as whose votes should or shouldn’t count, more susceptible to political meddling.

Democratic board member Jeff Carmon said Thursday there's no evidence for the kind of widespread voter fraud that would necessitate any of the stricter or more complicated rules approved Thursday. He indicated the board's GOP majority was helping legitimize false claims of fraud made by President Donald Trump, although he carefully avoided mentioning Trump by name.

"We’re supporting a lie," Carmon said Thursday. "... If we're going to keep moving down the road that follows, I would say, a national movement, I think we need to really be careful."

State law requires people to show one of several types of acceptable photo IDs to vote. However there are exemptions people can ask for if they don't have an ID, such as claiming a religious objection to being photographed, having their wallet stolen or other factors.

The new rules lower the bar for county elections officials to decide that people who ask for an exemption are lying, to remove a previous requirement for bipartisan agreement.

In past elections, voters without ID who asked for an exemption would be granted that exemption, and have their vote counted, unless their county elections board voted unanimously to deny their request. The new rules allow county boards to throw out people’s ballots with a simple majority vote, rather than unanimous agreement.

In all 100 counties across the state, Republicans hold three seats on the elections board and Democrats have two seats.

Republican board member Angela Hawkins implied that she thinks lots of people lie when they seek an exemption, but that it's hard to prove they're lying. She supported lowering the threshold and allowing boards to throw out people's votes even if there's disagreement over their eligibility.

"It's very difficult to find falsity in what someone says," Hawkins said Thursday.

Democratic board member Sioban Millen said she's concerned the upcoming elections will see GOP majorities on county elections boards voting to throw out ballots from contested Democratic voters, but not ballots from contested Republican voters.

"To make these photo ID debates at the county level into a very partisan vote, I think that's highly destructive to voters' trust in elections," Millen said. "I think we're opening ourselves up to potential problems."

Common Cause NC, a voter-access advocacy group, also objected. There’s no legitimate reason to abandon the current rules that require unanimous, bipartisan agreement, the group says.

“It is just so clearly inviting partisanship into the process,” the group’s policy director Brooks Fuller said in an interview.

In written comments to the elections board, Common Cause expanded on that thought: “The unanimity requirement is an important procedural and substantive safeguard for ensuring that eligible voters’ ballots are not put at risk because of hasty, insufficient investigations or partisan mischief,” Common Cause wrote. “The proposed rules would upend a well-functioning system in favor of a system that could be manipulated by partisan actions.”

In April, Republican board member Stacy Eggers IV said other decisions don’t require unanimous support and that the voter ID exemption fights shouldn’t need it either.

“This change is more consistent with the statute and how we do everything else that comes before the board,” Eggers said at the time. He repeated that argument again Thursday.

The elections board also approved new rules for campaign finance reporting, how recounts are conducted and for conduct at polling places.

One of the new rules for polling places allows volunteers on site to kick out any voter, campaigner, politician, protester or others if they think they’re being too noisy. Several members of the public previously objected, saying it seems dangerously close to violating people’s First Amendment rights.

“An election is not a library,” a Winston-Salem voter named Kelly Mears wrote to the elections board after they solicited public comments. “It is a public, contested, often noisy thing, and the rules that govern it should be tight where they restrict liberty and generous where they protect the ability to vote.”

A national conservative group, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, also objected to that proposal in the public comment period. RITE President Justin Riemer said it could be used to punish completely legitimate activity and opens the door for unfair, uneven application of the rules.

“A rule that reaches routine, lawful activity is unlikely to be enforced uniformly,” he wrote. “In practice, it invites selective application against election-related speech and the First Amendment challenges that follow.”

The mail-in voting changes up for approval next week would give county elections officials more freedom to throw out people’s ballots over technicalities such as using the wrong kind of envelope, although the officials would have some discretion.

Common Cause also opposes those changes. In a written statement to the elections board, it says the state’s mail-in voting rules are already overly confusing and cumbersome, and that the new changes will only make the process more complicated and more likely to result in people’s ballots being thrown out for ticky-tack reasons.

For example, people who vote by mail have to use multiple different envelopes placed inside a larger envelope. If the bigger one is sealed but another envelope inside the sealed envelope isn’t also sealed, elections officials would now be allowed to throw that ballot out.

Or, if someone uses the correct outer envelope but, inside of it, places their ballot inside the envelope intended for their voter ID rather than the separate envelope for their ballot, that could also make their ballot eligible to be thrown out. And if two people living together at the same address put their ballots in the same envelope, that could also now cause one or both ballots to be thrown out.

Common Cause says in all those cases, it should be very obvious to elections officials that the ballots aren’t fraudulent and should be counted, even if the new rules suggest otherwise.

“We have serious concerns that these proposed rules, if implemented, would unnecessarily disenfranchise eligible voters based on irregularities in ballot submissions that are entirely within the knowledge and ability of county boards of election to remedy,” Common Cause wrote.

Republicans have advocated for stricter mail-in voting rules in recent years after Trump made complaints over mail ballots a key part of his unproven claims of 2020 voter fraud. After the elections board solicited public comments on the proposed rule changes, multiple people wrote in suggesting mail-in voting shouldn’t be allowed at all.