RNC, state GOP rush to defend North Carolina’s last-minute mail ballot restrictions

State and national Republicans are thrusting themselves into a federal lawsuit challenging restrictive mail ballot rules in North Carolina. 

The lawsuit came after the state’s GOP-controlled election board took extraordinary steps to muscle the rules through in time for the midterms.

A federal judge on Friday granted a motion by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the North Carolina GOP to intervene in the suit and help defend the rules, alongside the state election board, which voted for the rules along party lines in September.

North Carolina advocacy groups and two voters* want to block the rules, which tightened mail ballot procedures. The first rule made it easier for election officials to reject ballots for envelope-sealing mistakes, and the second imposed restrictions on who can help voters return their ballots in person.

Plaintiffs warned the rules would inevitably disenfranchise voters, and do nothing to protect election integrity. Republicans called concerns that votes would not be counted “rank speculation.”

In a brief filed Friday responding to the plaintiffs’ request to block the rules for the midterms, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) downplayed the rules as “tiny provisions” that deal with a “small piece of North Carolina’s voting system— absentee ballots.”

The board also argued that the plaintiffs waited too long to file their lawsuit. Along with state and national Republicans in their own brief, the board invoked the Purcell principle to argue it’s too close to the election to change the rules. 

“Plaintiffs claim this is an emergency, but if so, it is an emergency of their own creation,” lawyers for the board wrote.

The argument ignores the sequence of events that led to the lawsuit. 

The board passed the rules in September on the same day ballots were mailed out to voters. Democrats and voting rights organizations have called the move a way to sidestep legislative review, which is typically required for approving rules that face opposition.

Because more than 10 people formally objected to both rules, they were set to be weighed by the state’s General Assembly before the board took them into eleventh-hour consideration to pass them with a 3-2 vote. 

The rules would not have gone into effect for this election if the board had followed proper legislative procedure, Democrats say.

“Legislative review — those words ought to have a meaning,” Siobhan Millen, a Democratic board member, told her colleagues in the September meeting before voting against the rules.

Governor Josh Stein (D) similarly called out the vote as a “last-minute workaround.”

Over 100,000 ballots have already been requested across the state, with 10 days left until the Oct. 20 requesting deadline. 

Plaintiffs will file their replies Monday, before a hearing in the case set for next week.

*The Elias Law Group (ELG) represents plaintiffs North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, Down Home North Carolina, Vaeme Afokpa and Raquel Nelson in this case. ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.