With GOP votes at risk, NC Republicans suddenly are OK with easing voting rules | Opinion

As Hurricane Helene’s devastation complicates voting in Republican-heavy western North Carolina, the GOP is showing an uncharacteristic approach to elections.

Suddenly, the party that made voting harder in the name of “election integrity” is in favor of making voting easier in western counties where accessibility to polling places and mail service remain disrupted. Two Republican members of the State Board of Elections joined the board’s three Democratic members in voting to make the changes.

No Republicans appear to be complaining about these changes, unlike their complaints then and now about mid-election changes made in 2020 because of COVID. Indeed, on Wednesday Republican legislative leaders rolled out legislation that will expand the changes in election procedures from the 13 counties named by the State Board of Elections to 25 counties included in the original disaster designation.

The GOP’s softening on voting rules may be out of respect for the right to vote. Certainly it is correct to adjust election rules after the loss of polling places, the displacement of many people and a shortage of poll workers.

But Republicans may also be open to the changes because western North Carolina is their party’s base. Two of the affected counties, Mitchell and Avery, have the first and second highest concentration of Republican voters in the state.

Former President Donald Trump, who carried North Carolina by only 1.3 percent of the vote in 2020, will need to win big in the western counties to carry the state in November. The GOP’s statewide candidates for governor, attorney general and other offices and judicial seats also can’t afford a falloff of votes from rural western counties.

Under changes approved Monday by the State Board of Elections, local election boards in the 13 counties can by a bipartisan majority vote change voting sites and when sites will be open during early voting days. Absentee ballots will be accepted at any county board of elections office — not just the one in the voter’s home county. The deadline for requesting absentee ballots is extended to the day before Election Day, rather than a week before.

The legislation, according to a Republican Senate news release, also “Establishes procedures for spoiling and reissuing absentee ballots and for curing deficiencies to accommodate voters who have been displaced by the hurricane.”

These and other changes will help voters affected by Helene’s flooding. But some Republican lawmakers may wish they hadn’t done so much to restrict voting in the first place.

They may regret the new requirement for voters to present an authorized photo ID because some Republican voters may have lost their driver’s license along with other possessions in the flood.

Given Helene’s effect on mail delivery, Republican lawmakers may wish that they hadn’t eliminated the three-day grace period for the receipt of absentee ballots postmarked on or before Election Day.

Sen. Warren Daniel, a Burke County Republican who co-sponsored the legislation that ended the grace period, said at the time of the bill’s passage in 2023 that “Every day that passes after Election Day with votes still coming in creates the possibility of distrust in the process.” What will create distrust in the process is a stream of mail-in ballots going uncounted because closed roads and other obstacles delayed their delivery.

Republican lawmakers may also be sorry they empowered partisan observers at polling places. That could lead to an increase in challenged votes in western counties as voters show up at new locations and some vote from outside their home county.

Finally, Republican lawmakers may wish they had given the State Board of Elections all the funding the board said it needed to run an ordinary election, let alone one complicated by a natural disaster.

There is no problem with voter fraud in North Carolina. There is a problem with voter suppression.

Now, only temporarily and only in certain counties, Republicans are willing to make the voting process what it should always be for everyone: Easy to do.