Who’s kidding who? Conservative election law hypocrisy sinks to new depths

When it comes to understanding and assessing the never-ending barrage of new state voting rules and election law changes that North Carolina Republicans continue to advance, it would be one thing if the proposals came from a group of proud and honorable sticklers for detail.

In other words, yes, repeated efforts to make voting by mail more difficult, eliminate college polling sites and disqualify ballots with tiny technical errors would still be objectionable, wasteful and unnecessary. But if they were part of an across-the-board, zero-tolerance campaign that had long sought to make every uncrossed “t” and undotted “i” in voting and elections unacceptable, one could at least give the proponents credit for being honorably consistent.

Alas, however, as even a brief review of recent news headlines reminds us, nothing could be further from the case. Rather, much like their national leader, President Donald Trump, for whom no measure of blatant and self-serving hypocrisy is too extreme or embarrassing, North Carolina Republicans are more than happy to preach about (and pass new laws supposedly grounded in) a commitment to election integrity, even as they cut every corner and hide behind every conceivable loophole when it comes to the rules governing their own campaigns.

For a classic example of this brand of hypocrisy in action, check out a recent news story by Raleigh News & Observer investigative reporter Dan Kane about a complaint filed by the state’s pre-eminent independent election law watchdog, Bob Hall, regarding a fundraiser held last year to benefit GOP Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall.

As readers may recall, Bob Hall (no relation to the Speaker), played a key role two decades ago in unearthing the corruption that ultimately led to the fall and criminal conviction of Democratic House Speaker Jim Black.

In the new complaint, Hall detailed to the state Board of Elections how Senator Berger and Speaker Hall raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in a May 2025 fundraiser held by a group known as the Indian American Association that featured an array of sketchy details. Among the problems unearthed by Hall: a failure by the GOP leaders to document supposed reimbursements to the nonprofit for sponsoring the event, and inaccurate campaign reports which showed a pair of $13,300 contributions from individuals who said they made no such contributions.

Kane also reported some curious details about the Indian American Association itself – including the fact that it had filed papers with the state when it first incorporated claiming to be a 501(c)3 nonprofit (which is a kind of nonprofit prohibited from making political contributions) and that it had failed to respond to Kane’s request to provide copies of its recent federal tax returns as required by law.

The investigation by the Board of Elections, which is controlled by Republican appointees, ultimately determined that that it was unable to find sufficient evidence of a violation of state law, but conveniently for Berger and Speaker Hall, a Board spokesperson claimed that a 2018 law passed by GOP lawmakers prohibits it from releasing the details of its findings.

In short, the whole thing stinks. Perhaps it’s true that there was technically no way for the election officials to uncover definitive evidence of a law violation, but the lack of transparency and the extant unanswered questions certainly give little indication of a complete exoneration.

And while this too, might be one thing if it was a one-off – an isolated incident in which a pair of political leaders with demonstrated vigilance for election law compliance simply made a dumb or inadvertent mistake – a review of the record makes clear that’s not the case either.

In fact, Bob Hall has filed multiple fundraising and reporting complaints against Berger alone and in October of 2025 dubbed him “the king of self-dealing and pay-to-play politics in North Carolina.” What’s more, Hall has also spoken out repeatedly in recent years about GOP-authored legislation that would further undermine already weak campaign finance laws and dramatically enhance incentives for big money interests to engage in corrupt vote buying.

And all of this brings us back to the ongoing fusillade of Republican proposals – both nationally and here in North Carolina – that are supposedly motivated by a commitment to “election integrity.” This includes new GOP-authored rules that would make it easier to discard mailed ballots and ballots of voters unable to provide a photo ID.

As with President Trump’s embarrassingly hypocritical efforts to limit voting by mail – an option of which he personally availed himself in past elections – the efforts of GOP pols to subject voters to punctilious, fine-tooth-comb treatment while sparing their own campaigns from anything vaguely similar makes clear what really going on here.

In other words, who’s kidding who? Anyone who falls for the claim that the actions of state Republican leaders in regulating elections and complying with election law are motivated by anything other than the raw lust for power is either absurdly naïve or willfully ignorant.