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Rights Advocates Call on North Carolina Governor to Veto GOP's 'Anti-Voter' Bill
S.B. 747 places new restrictions on absentee voters and empowers partisan poll watchers, opening the door for voter intimidation, advocates say.
Aug 18, 2023
Voting rights advocates in North Carolina are calling on Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to veto Senate Bill 747 following the Republican-controlled state General Assembly's passage of the legislation on Wednesday night, with the GOP moving to restrict the use of absentee ballots and take other steps that would "make it harder for people to vote rather than easier," according to one Democratic Party official.
By imposing new limits on when election officials can process absentee ballots, among other measures, the bill "is simply and basically voter suppression," Anderson Clayton, chair of the state party, told The Washington Post Thursday.
Although Republican state lawmakers joined Democrats in 2009 in unanimously supporting legislation to ensure that absentee ballots would be accepted by officials up to three days after voting ends as long as the ballots were postmarked by Election Day, the GOP pushed through new rules requiring election boards to count absentee ballots only if they are received by 7:30 pm on Election Day.
Advocates say thousands of voters may now be disenfranchised due to mail delays and that certain groups will be disproportionately affected by the new limits.
"Ending the three-day grace period would cruelly harm older voters, people with disabilities, rural voters ,and others who rely on mail-in absentee voting as a lifeline for exercising their right to vote," said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, in a statement. "North Carolinians who follow well-established rules and cast their ballot on or before Election Day shouldn't have their vote thrown away because of a delay in mail delivery that's no fault of their own."
Cooper, who is expected to veto the legislation, said Republicans in the state Senate and General Assembly pushed the bill by "using the 'big lie' of election fraud" and baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged" in President Joe Biden's favor.
The Republican Party "wants to block voters they think won't vote Republican, legitimize conspiracy theorists to intimidate election workers, and anoint themselves to decide contested elections," said Cooper.
In addition to restricting the use of absentee ballots, S.B. 747 will require voters who use North Carolina's same-day registration system to vote using a "retrievable" ballot that can be disqualified after just one attempt to deliver a voter registration card, instead of the two attempts that are currently required before a ballot is rejected.
Voters will be permitted to challenge the registrations of anyone in their county under the new law and partisan poll watchers will be allowed to listen to conversations between voters and poll workers and take notes—opening the door to voter intimidation, rights advocates said.
"Voter intimidation is now theoretically legal inside of a polling location," Clayton told the Post.
While North Carolina has long had an "accessible election system that works well for voters throughout the state," Phillips said, "politicians in the legislature are now placing harmful burdens on voters and election administrators."
"Senate Bill 747 is filled with a number of bad ideas that undermine North Carolinians' freedom to vote," he added. "We urge Gov. Cooper to veto this unnecessary and damaging bill."
Activist Joe Katz noted that the bill was passed after the Republican Party won legislative supermajorities using district maps that disenfranchised Democratic voters and after state Rep. Tricia Cotham (R-100) changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican following her staunchly pro-abortion rights election campaign last year.
Cotham's decision to join the Republicans gives the party a General Assembly supermajority that could override Cooper's veto.
"North Carolina just won't quit suppressing the vote," said Leslie Proll, who heads the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Changes like the ones included in S.B. 747 "do not improve the integrity of our elections," Megan Bellamy, vice president for law and policy at Voting Rights Lab, told the Post. "If anything, they erode the trust of voters."
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Groups, Lawmakers Demand FERC Deny Mountain Valley Pipeline Extension for NC
"North Carolinians refuse to be led on by greedy energy corporations, and time and again our state's residents have told legislators and regulators this pipeline and its extension are not needed," said one campaigner.
Jul 25, 2023
The Sierra Club and other advocacy groups on Tuesday highlighted the growing chorus of residents, political leaders, and organizations opposed to a partially built fracked gas pipeline in West Virginia and Virginia along with a proposed expansion into North Carolina.
The latest wave of opposition to the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) comes in the form of public comments submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding a potential three-year extension to complete the Southgate project. Unlike the initial portion of the pipeline, construction has not begun on the North Carolina section.
"The future we want to build for our communities starts today, holding our regulators accountable and ensuring we never see the day when this dangerous and unnecessary project harms communities," said Sierra Club senior field organizer Caroline Hansley.
"North Carolinians refuse to be led on by greedy energy corporations, and time and again our state's residents have told legislators and regulators this pipeline and its extension are not needed," she added. "With no trees cut, no pipe laid, and no meaningful headway to commence construction, we ask decision-makers to deny this pipeline from ever harming these communities."
"With no trees cut, no pipe laid, and no meaningful headway to commence construction, we ask decision-makers to deny this pipeline from ever harming these communities."
Sierra Club joined Appalachian Voices, Good Stewards of Rockingham, Clean Water for North Carolina, Haw River Assembly, North Carolina Conservation Network, 7 Directions of Service, and the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition for a letter urging FERC "to find that there is no good cause to grant an extension of time for the project's certificate of public convenience and necessity."
"This is a clear opportunity for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to do its due diligence and protect the public interest and the environments of Virginia and North Carolina by sending MVP back to the drawing board," Appalachian Voices North Carolina program manager Ridge Graham said Tuesday.
Emily Sutton of Haw River Assembly argued that the Southgate project "provides no public necessity or benefit for North Carolinians that outweighs the destruction of the places that we love."
"The Haw River is a lifeline for our communities and the ecosystems that depend on it, providing drinking water, recreational access, flood control, and critical habitat for sensitive wildlife," Sutton explained. "This project threatens to irreparably destroy the health of this watershed. When given the opportunity to fight to protect it, our communities and the legislators that represent them made their voices heard."
Along with the coalition of advocacy groups, the NAACP Virginia State Conference, 22 Virginia legislators, 52 North Carolina lawmakers, Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, and Congresswomen Valerie Foushee and Kathy Manning, both North Carolina Democrats, sent FERC comments opposing the project.
Detailing their three main reasons for asking FERC not to extend the project's certificate, the congresswomen wrote: "First, the MVP Southgate is widely opposed... Second, North Carolina and Virginia regulators rejected permit applications for the MVP Southgate in 2021, and the company has failed to diligently pursue new applications."
"Finally, FERC's original need determination for the MVP Southgate pipeline is now woefully outdated," they continued, also calling for a new 30-day comment period for landowners and communities to weigh in on MVP, which remains tied up in legal challenges.
Last month, after President Joe Biden signed debt ceiling legislation he negotiated with congressional Republicans that included language to fast-track completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, FERC said the developer "has all necessary authorizations" for the project in West Virginia and Virginia, and "is therefore authorized to proceed with all remaining construction."
However, earlier this month a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuity temporarily halted construction of a section in the Jefferson National Forest. Despite the president's climate pledges and extreme heat sparking fresh demands for ditching fossil fuels, the Biden administration has joined the pipeline developer, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), some GOP lawmakers, and other MVP proponents who are asking the nation's Supreme Court to block the order.
As two Western Pennsylvania Republicans in Congress also weighed in, Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society—whose lawsuit led to the order pausing some MVP construction—told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Tuesday that those behind the pipeline are "attempting yet another end run around justice."
"Construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline through the Jefferson National Forest has been on hold for years—the 4th Circuit has simply maintained the status quo while this ongoing, important legal challenge to the destructive pipeline is heard in court," Williams said. "The order halting construction is lawful, and it should alarm every American when Congress ignores the vital role of an independent court system in our constitutional structure."
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NC Gov. Vetoes 'Dangerous, Cruel, and Deeply Unpopular' Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills
While pushing state legislators to "do the right thing," said one campaigner, "we remain clear-eyed that families should take steps to prepare if anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is enacted."
Jul 05, 2023
LGBTQ+ rights advocates on Wednesday celebrated after Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a trio of discriminatory bills while also warning that Republican state legislators could ultimately force them through.
Cooper has vetoed dozens of bills, but thanks to Democrat-turned-Republican state Rep. Tricia Cotham (112), the GOP has a three-fifths majority in both chambers of the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA), enabling lawmakers to override the governor.
"For campaign purposes only, Republicans are serving up a triple threat of political culture wars using government to invade the rights and responsibilities of parents and doctors, hurting vulnerable children, and damaging our state's reputation and economy like they did with the harmful bathroom bill," Cooper said in a statement confirming his three widely anticipated vetoes.
"We don't need politicians inflaming their political culture wars by making broad, uninformed decisions about an extremely small number of vulnerable children that are already handled by a robust system that relies on parents, schools, and sports organizations," he said of House Bill 574, which would bar transgender youth from participating in althetic teams that align with their gender identity.
"This slate of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is unacceptable—and we're grateful that Gov. Cooper made the right choice by vetoing."
The governor also vetoed House Bill 808, which would ban gender-affirming care for minors. He asserted that "a doctor's office is no place for politicians, and North Carolina should continue to let parents and medical professionals make decisions about the best way to offer gender care for their children. Ordering doctors to stop following approved medical protocols sets a troubling precedent and is dangerous for vulnerable youth and their mental health."
The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and at least hundreds of medical professionals across North Carolina support gender-affirming care for minors.
Cooper's third target, Senate Bill 49, is a "Don't Say Gay" measure that he argued would "scare teachers into silence by injecting fear and uncertainty into classrooms," and hamper "the important and sometimes lifesaving role of educators as trusted advisers when students have nowhere else to turn."
"The rights of parents are well established in state law," Cooper said, "so instead of burdening schools with their political culture wars, legislators should help them with better teacher pay and more investments in students."
Kendra R. Johnson, executive director of Equality North Carolina, said that "this slate of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is unacceptable—and we're grateful that Gov. Cooper made the right choice by vetoing. Now we implore the NCGA to do the right thing and recognize that this entire package of bills is dangerous, cruel, and deeply unpopular."
"These bills would tarnish North Carolina's reputation as an inclusive and welcoming place to live, work, and visit—and they would cause immense damage to transgender and queer youth, who already experience significant disparities," Johnson continued. "Anti-LGBTQ+ attacks have no place in North Carolina and the vetoes must be sustained."
Campaign for Southern Equality executive director Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara emphasized that "even as we will advocate tirelessly for the NCGA to do the right thing by sustaining Gov. Cooper’s veto, we remain clear-eyed that families should take steps to prepare if anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is enacted.
"Our team is at the ready to support families through our Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project to ensure that North Carolina youth have uninterrupted access to the healthcare they need and deserve," Beach-Ferrara added. "Each of these bills is flatly discriminatory and we are confident they will ultimately be struck down. We want LGBTQ+ youth across the state to know we are with them every step of the way and will never stop fighting for their equality."
North Carolina is far from the only state where the LGBTQ+ community—particularly young people—is facing such attacks.
Noting the hundreds of bills that GOP state lawmakers are pushing across the country, Liz Barber, senior policy counsel at the ACLU of North Carolina, said Wednesday that "legislators are using their power to bully an already vulnerable community, and Gov. Cooper has taken an important step by vetoing these bills."
"Trans youth deserve to have the same rights as their cisgender peers," Barber declared, stressing the need to continue to stand up for them.
According to the ACLU's tracker, during this year's legislative session, 77 of 491 anti-LGBTQ+ proposals have passed into law in 21 states, while 202 bills have been defeated, for now.
Such bills are expected to continue to come up in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race, given the positions of former President Donald Trump and GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. While there are several other candidates already in the contest, Trump continues to dominate polls, followed at a distance by DeSantis.
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