Republicans push for NC mail-in voting rules to be among the nation’s harshest

The North Carolina Republican Party has filed a request with the State Board of Elections, asking for a declaratory ruling that would authorize county boards of elections to scrutinize signatures on absentee ballot request forms and absentee ballot return envelopes. (The NCSBE has opened a written public comment period for this request through July 5.)

Under this process, the county board of elections would compare the signature on your absentee ballot envelope or request form to the signature on your original voter registration documents. If it doesn’t match, your ballot wouldn’t count. This is the method used to verify absentee ballots in 27 states.

But North Carolina law already has mechanisms in place to confirm an absentee voter’s identity. We’re one of nine states that requires witness signatures on absentee ballots as a means of ballot verification.

According to Republicans, that’s not enough. Their proposed signature verification guidance wouldn’t replace the state’s existing witness signature requirement — it would add to it. Based on information from the National Conference of State Legislatures, no other state appears to conduct signature verification on top of requiring witness signatures on absentee or mail-in ballots.

Signature verification, a process so flawed that experts have described it as “witchcraft” and “ripe for error,” can potentially disenfranchise legitimate voters. In states where signature matching is required, thousands of ballots get thrown out each election cycle due to signature errors. Those ballots disproportionately belong to younger voters, older voters and minority voters, who may be less familiar with the voting process or whose handwriting may have changed over time. In especially close elections, the number of ballots thrown out may exceed the margin of victory.

Even more concerning is the fact that it’s subjective. Election officials aren’t handwriting experts. (They are, however, political appointees.) They have to move very quickly to make sure votes get counted — meaning the signature is glanced at and verified in a matter of seconds. Mistakes happen. And if signature verification is authorized, but not required, by the NCSBE, the level of scrutiny applied to absentee ballots could vary by county.

Republicans are arguing that election officials fall short on their statutory duty — and are potentially subject to criminal liability — unless they “exhaust all available resources” to confirm that every mail-in ballot is indeed valid. That, they say, is the only way to protect North Carolinians against vote dilution due to potential illegal votes and maintain public confidence in our elections.

In 2018, a voter fraud scheme orchestrated by a Republican political operative influenced the outcome of a North Carolina congressional election by harvesting hundreds of illegitimate absentee ballots. It was perhaps the first federal election in history in which the results had to be thrown out due to fraud.

That is the only example of widespread voter fraud occurring in North Carolina. Every audit and investigation conducted over the years has reached the same conclusion: illegal voting, especially at the individual level, is extraordinarily rare.

It’s a solution in search of a problem. And it’s not new. Just in the past year, a discriminatory voter ID law was struck down by a state court, attempts to forcibly inspect voting machines were rebuffed and bills that would have significantly limited mail-in voting and scrubbed supposedly illegal voters from the state’s voter rolls were vetoed by the governor.

Republicans argue in their request that the current system deprives voters of their constitutional right to free and fair elections, ignoring, of course, that they have often been found guilty of doing exactly that. The request even had the gall to repeat arguments for equal voting power made by the North Carolina Supreme Court when it overturned maps gerrymandered by Republicans earlier this year — a ruling they lambasted as “perverse precedent” set by an “activist judiciary.”

If Republicans think absentee ballot rules need changing, they ought to prove that the current ones aren’t working. Do they have concrete evidence that shows people regularly and pervasively engaging in illegal voting, depriving North Carolinians of their rightful voice at the polls? If not, then this requirement isn’t worth the potential harm and cost it would cause.

Until then, here’s a tip for boosting confidence in our elections: stop trying to persuade voters they aren’t secure with unnecessary policies.