Uncertainty continues to cloud this fall’s elections, with the state expected to ask the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday to reinstate North Carolina’s voter ID law, while counties decide whether to extend or shorten early voting.
Mecklenburg County’s elections board Chair Mary Potter Summa said it’s unclear whether the board will reduce the number of planned early voting hours. The board is scheduled to vote on a plan Monday.
Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Tuesday addressed the voter ID law at a rally in Wilmington. Without an ID, he said, people might vote multiple times.
“Voter ID. What’s with that?” he said. “Why aren’t we having voter ID? In other words, ‘I want to vote, here’s my identification. I want to vote.’ As opposed to somebody coming up and voting 15 times for Hillary.… You won’t vote 15 times, but people will.”
Gov. Pat McCrory told the Wilmington rally that he’ll ask the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that threw out the ID law and with it provisions that barred same-day registration and shortened the early voting period from 17 to 10 days.
Last month a three-judge federal panel overturned the law, saying it was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.”
But in overturning the ID law, the judges eliminated the requirement that counties have the same number of early-voting hours as they did in the last presidential race. Now counties have until Aug. 19 to determine how many hours to have early voting.
State elections director Kim Strach last week urged counties to “be mindful” of expected November turnout and the popularity of early voting. In a memo to county board, she said she expects about 56 percent of all voters this fall to vote early.
In Guilford County Monday night, the Republican-led elections board considered but ultimately put off an early voting plan that could have made casting ballots more difficult for college students and black residents. A rowdy crowd of 300 people packed the meeting to oppose a proposal to cut a dozen early voting sites.
The board ultimately decided to back a compromise plan that kept more early voting sites open.
In Mecklenburg, Summa said she’s not sure what the board will do when it votes Monday at its 5 p.m. meeting.
“I’m not a big fan of early voting but in this county the reality is we have to have it because we don’t have enough machines to accommodate voters on Election Day,” she said. She added that number of hours won’t be more than in the 2012 election but could be less.
“I’m not saying that we won’t (have the 2012 hours, but) do we need that many hours to adequately accommodate voters on Election Day?”
