NC Board of Elections endorses adjustments to voter ID rules for use after the primary

The state Board of Elections on Thursday endorsed permanent voter ID rules for use in future elections.

The new proposed rules must be approved by another state commission before they go into effect. Rules for voter ID  in use since last year remain in place for the current primary elections. 

Changes the board made to the current photo ID rules were mostly technical. The rules were adopted on a 3-2 party-line vote.

One change would require poll workers to offer people voting in person without ID the option of filling out a photo ID exception form explaining why they don’t have one and cast a provisional ballot, or casting a provisional ballot and returning to the state board of elections to show an ID before the final vote tally. 

Voting rights groups that monitored implementation of  the law during last year’s municipal elections found inconsistencies across counties. Some voters who left IDs at home were given exception forms, the observers found.  Some voters who did not possess IDs and were supposed to receive exception forms were not given the opportunity to fill them out.

The partisan division in the state board’s vote came over a proposed amendment offered by Republican member Stacy “Four” Eggers IV, who wanted written into the rules that county boards can reject voters’ “non-responsive” explanations why they don’t have acceptable ID. .

The issue of rejecting such forms was a topic of discussion at a statewide training conference for elections officials and elections board members earlier this month. 

Along with preprinted explanations such as “lack of transportation” on the exception forms is a space for voters to write a reason why they don’t have ID. 

Republican board members wanted written into the rules that local boards could reject forms with reasons that don’t address a lack of ID.

Democrats were concerned that making that addition would go beyond the bounds of the state’s photo ID law and leave it up to county boards to decide whose  answers were  “non-responsive,” resulting in the law being applied unevenly across the state. 

Democrats preferred to have the state elections staff address the question in written guidance to county boards.

“By saying ‘non-responsive’ we’re now asking for a broad interpretation, which any member in any county can read differently,” Board Chairman Alan Hirsch said.

“Already we know that different county board members have been, up until now, viewing this requirement differently. Our job is to find consistently across the counties. I fear language of that sort would just give every county board member a different read on what that means.” 

Learn more about what North Carolina voters need to know about early in-person voting ahead of the March 5 primary.