NC Senate to debate new election rules that could make it harder to know who’s funding politicians

A contentious and wide-ranging set of changes to North Carolina’s elections rules is scheduled to continue moving through the state legislature Tuesday as the proposal receives its first hearing in the state Senate.

Among other changes, House Bill 958 would:

• Reduce transparency in campaign finance elections by allowing more information about who is funding campaigns to remain secret.
• Make people wait longer after switching political parties to run for office as a member of their new party.
• Tweak the rules for challenging the validity of people’s ballots.
• Create new powers for Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek to conduct post-election audits, in addition to the audits elections officials already do after every election. 

The bill passed the state House of Representatives in a party-line vote last month. The same week the elections bill cleared the House, state lawmakers were also rushing through the new state budget, finalizing a deal on new hemp regulations, banning foreign adversaries from buying local farmland and cracking down on homeless camps, among other priorities.

Some of those have since become law or been vetoed, while others — such as the elections rules and stricter new hemp proposals — passed only one chamber and are awaiting approval by the other.

Despite the numerous bills being debated then, the elections bill received outsize attention from lawmakers as well as the general public. Rep. Amos Quick, D-Guilford, said during one hearing that too many changes causing confusion for voters isn’t good for democracy.

“Our elections in North Carolina deserve some normalcy and some level of predictability,” he said. “These constant changes are confusing to us as legislators, so certainly confusing to the general public.”

More changes to the bill could come as the Senate begins its review. The state House debated half a dozen different versions of the bill before settling on the changes it ultimately approved last month.

“Election bills are complicated,” House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, explained in June. “They often deal with multiple aspects of an election. One of the things that’s somewhat unique to an elections bill is it sort of takes time for folks to digest it. And every time it changes, of course, that creates a new thing to go and look at and to make sure that our members understand.”