Supporters of public campaign financing have long claimed that it would never have a partisan slant. But the latest Civitas investigation has found how one liberal activist has taken control of the process.

In the first article of this series, we revealed the disturbing relationship Bob Hall, a liberal lobbyist for Democracy NC, has with the State Board of Elections (SBOE), which makes decisions affecting North Carolina’s electoral process. Democracy NC is the ultra-liberal non-profit that was one of Blueprint NC’s founding members. Blueprint NC is the organization in the center of a recent scandal of a leaked memo that revealed how liberal groups have been targeting the Governor and the Republican leaders in the legislature. The second article of the series brought to light overwhelming evidence proving Hall is a behind-the-scenes driving force at the SBOE and in 2012 coordinated with the SBOE to attack the Republicans in the legislature over a budget issue. Now we turn our attention to the involvement of Hall and left-wing groups in public campaign financing.

With hundreds of emails as evidence, we can illustrate the extent to which the SBOE staff has, for years, surrendered their official duties to Bob Hall, head of the liberal advocacy group Democracy NC. In combing through more than 5,000 emails to and from the SBOE and Hall, it is evident that Hall controlled and directed the North Carolina Public Campaign Fund Program (NCPCF), the vehicle for public campaign financing in the Tar Heel State.

Bob Hall’s own words will say it best. Here is an excerpt from a recommendation letter  dated September 27, 2004 and written by Hall for SBOE Executive Director Gary Bartlett’s signature. The recommendation was for a grant from the Deer Creek Foundation to go to Democracy NC:

Democracy North Carolina has been involved from the beginning in the legislation that led to the state’s pioneering judicial public financing program, and they have been involved in every step of the new law’s implementation, from the appointment of the Public Campaign Fund’s Advisory Council to the promotion of the $3 check-off that is the chief source of the program’s funding.

Most recently, Democracy North Carolina led the effort to make sure the State Board could produce and widely distribute a Judicial Voter Guide, even though the program faced a severe budget shortfall.

This is so brazen it has to be underlined: Hall ghost-wrote a letter to be signed by NC’s top election official, seeking money for Hall’s own group. Plus, the recommendation might be considered a confession to the outsized role Hall and Democracy NC play in what is supposed to be an influence-free elections process.

Seeing that Bob Hall and Democracy NC enjoy full access to all the resources provided by the SBOE (IT, legal, administrative, and data),  a comment in Bartlett’s letter – ”Your support of their work will help all of us in North Carolina” –  gives us a view of the twisted relationship between a supposedly nonpartisan board and a liberal activist. And the above is just one of a host of emails in a similar vein.

As in the mystery story about the dog that didn’t bark, an equally important fact is the lack of other voices. It is interesting to note that an Advisory Council was statutorily created to implement and support the NCPCF. According to the 2012 SBOE Campaign Finance Manual, “its primary function is to advise the State Board of Elections on the rules, procedures and opinions adopted for administration and enforcement of the Program. The State Board of Elections will also be advised of funding needs of the Program by the Advisory Council.” But, according to the SBOE, the Advisory Council members did not meet after the initial setup in 2003 — the year the program was implemented. It shouldn’t be surprising though: After reading these emails, it seems plain the SBOE thought there is little need for any opinion other than that of Bob Hall.

The Roots of the Problem

Legislation was passed in 2002 to establish North Carolina’s Public Campaign Fund for candidates for the North Carolina Court of Appeals and the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 2007, the General Assembly passed legislation that launched a pilot public financing fund for candidates for State Auditor, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Commissioner of Insurance.

While the SBOE likes to say that the North Carolina Public Campaign Fund is not funded by the General Fund of North Carolina, that claim gives many voters a misleading impression. Indeed, in 2007 the General Assembly appropriated more than $4.5 million in taxpayer dollars to establish the public campaign finance system for Council of State offices. The largest source of revenue still comes out of taxpayers’ wallets — from designations to the Public Campaign Fund by taxpayers through a positive check-off of three dollars on an individual’s income tax form. The check-off redirects tax dollars to the campaign fund instead of the General Fund. Moreover, the public financing for judicial races were promised to be financed by voluntary contributions, but by 2004 the legislature decided to divert taxpayer funds from the state budget into the system, and in 2006 the previously optional attorney fee contribution was converted to a mandatory one. Most lawyers did not even believe in the system sold as a way to protect the integrity of the courts.

Proponents of public campaign financing believe that it will reduce the influence of special interest money. Opponents believe that public funding of campaigns infringes on free speech and forces taxpayers to “contribute” to candidates they do not support. Opponents also see a real danger in giving government so much control of political speech. After all, who will make those delicate decisions that could easily be construed as partisan?

The Voter Guide

Sadly, a key document meant to provide unbiased information to voters is also compromised by Bob Hall’s excessive involvement.

In addition to funds, both programs include the distribution of a Voter Guide just before the onset of One-Stop Voting. According to the SBE Campaign Manual, the guide explains the purpose of the Public Campaign Fund along with an explanation of the functions of the appellate courts, the method and laws for the election of appellate judges, and information on all candidates for the North Carolina Court of Appeals and North Carolina Supreme Court. And, since the Council of State candidates have been added, it provides information on all candidates who have filed for State Auditor, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Commissioner of Insurance and explains the functions of each office.

The Voter Guide is an important publication, in that it is in effect a very expensive campaign ad. The mailing goes directly to every voting household in the state. In 2012, 4,200,000 copies of the voter guide were produced and mailed at taxpayer expense. Through public records we received, we see that Hall has played the lead role in the editing, production and printing of the guides. He has written, designed, produced and managed the printing and mailing of the voter guide from start to finish.

On September 15, 2004, in the first of almost 600 emails dealing with the voter guide that year, Hall sent Bartlett his final design and language for the 2004 General Election Voter Guide. That year, the first for public financing and voter guides, the state mailed 3.9 million guides at a cost of $498,000.

But the most alarming email was sent March 10, 2008 from Bob Hall to Don Wright, General Counsel for the SBOE. This email proved what every opponent of the public campaign financing knows: public funding of campaigns cannot be managed in a fair and non-partisan way. Though the candidates’ personal statements are supposed to be their own unvarnished words, Hall edited the content of two candidates’ personal statements.

Here are two suggestions Hall made:

Page 7: Kristin Ruth – Legal/Judicial Experience: I think it’s a problem to keep in “decide thousands of cases a year, recognized nationally as an authority on child support enforcement; frequent speaker on child support issues.” This will encourage others to add all sorts of stuff to their career list.

Page 10: Wayne Goodwin – Education: He lists Governor’s School West, Institute for Political Leadership, and Center for Creative Leadership, but these are just leadership seminars and programs, not degree programs. It’s a mess to include every seminar or workshop somebody wants to feature. Also, you can save space under his Endorsements by abbreviating Representative to Rep. in three cases and also abbreviate the Executive Director titles.

Remember, these are supposed to be the candidates’ own words. And Hall’s casual manner makes it seem as if he is accustomed to making changes in the Guide. That in turns brings up the question: What other changes did he make?

After a few years of doing pro bono work on the SBOE’s voter guide, Hall even suggested that the SBOE contract this project out to a third party – perhaps even his organization. In an email exchange between Gary Bartlett and Don Wright on August 10, 2009, Wright wanted to know if Bartlett was serious about contracting it out to a third party “that may include Bob and associates.” In his response, Bartlett said, “I’m having discussions with Bob and Dameon. As soon as I hear them out, we’ll talk.” It’s fair to assume that “Dameon” was Damon Circosta, at the time the Director of NC Center for Voter Education, another Blueprint NC member. (Circosta has since gone to work for the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, which is funded and controlled by the Goodmon family, which owns WRAL-TV). Circosta was involved with many of the voter guide emails, along with other liberal activists, such as Bob Phillips of Common Cause (Blueprint NC member) and Chase Foster, former Director of NC Voters for Clean Elections (NCVCE), also linked to Blueprint. These men appear to have considerable input into NCPCF and voter guides, given that many of their emails are forwarded through Bob Hall or sent directly to Gary Bartlett. To illustrate the incestuous nature of these Blueprint NC organizations, Bob Hall and Bob Phillips are both members of the NCVCE board.

While we have no evidence the SBOE officially contracted this “project” out to a third party — why should they? They had Bob Hall. To summarize, in the nearly 1,000 emails discussing NCPCF and/or Voter Guides we read about all aspects of the voter guide production process and continuous promotion of NCPCF – and Bob Hall was part of all of it. He has been working with the SBOE and the legislature as far back as 2003 to design, create, implement and sustain North Carolina’s public campaign funding, including municipal pilot programs. His actions included discussions with and about legislators, department Secretaries, public vendors, SBOE staff and a myriad of left-wing organizations. It is evident that Bob Hall will stop at nothing to further his agenda, including acting as a censor when it comes to free speech,  and the past SBOE was happy to help.

At this time we have a request in for the most current emails involving the SBOE and Bob Hall so we do not know the extent, if any, of Bob Hall’s involvement with the 2012 voter guide. If history is any example, it will probably be extensive.

The new SBOE and director need to address these very serious problems. There are, however, additional questions. First, while sweeping changes are being made to personnel at the SBOE, including board members and staff, it is safe to assume Bob Hall has not yet received his pink slip – will this change?

Second, can any public campaign finance law be completely objective? This case shows how vulnerable such processes are to behind-the-scenes manipulation. We have shed some light on what happens here, but this investigation is just one of our projects studying North Carolina’s flawed elections system.

Third, nonprofits such as Democracy NC and Blueprint NC have counterparts and allies across the nation. What have those groups been up to in North Carolina and other states?

Note: An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated that the voting guide is for only the candidates who participate in the public financing program, and that candidates that choose not to participate are not mentioned in the Voters Guide. We regret the error.

The post Guiding the NC Elections Board – to the Left appeared first on Civitas Institute.

Anyone that has brought a challenge before a local board of elections knows that it is not a simple or easy process. In order to challenge a voter in North Carolina, the challenge can only be made if the challenger “knows, suspects or reasonably believes” a person is not “qualified and entitled to vote.” (NCGS 163-85). In addition, the law puts the burden of proof on the challenger, who must present evidence. Furthermore, NCGS 163-90.1 provides that challenging a voter or a ballot is not to be made indiscriminately and that “no challenge shall be sustained unless the challenge is substantiated by affirmative proof.”

Meeting these requirements makes the outcome of the April 18 Pasquotank County Board of Elections (BOE) hearing examining 60 voter registration challenges even more surprising.

Richard “Pete” Gilbert, the county GOP chairman — who was acting only as a citizen of the county — brought the voter registration challenges before the local BOE.

The outcome – 57 of the 60 challenges were sustained – means that 57 voters were found to have committed voter fraud. In other words, the board decided that the evidence Mr. Gilbert provided proved that those voters did not live where they said they lived when they voted in November 2012. Maybe even more troubling is that 52 of these voters could not be located at all, as their first-class mail was returned “undeliverable.”

The Left constantly tells us that there is no voter fraud in North Carolina and they claim that only a few cases have been investigated compared to millions of votes cast over the past four or five years. The outcome of the Pasquotank County hearing is proof that if there is a system in place to identify voters, fraud can be identified. Unfortunately, it’s a fluke that the bad practice of same day registration (SDR) gave the challengers the data and resources they needed to see the fraudulent practices being perpetuated in Pasquotank County.

In North Carolina, starting in 2008, voters who miss the deadline to register to vote can register and vote at the same time during the 17 days of One-Stop Voting. A provision of this 2008 law was to require all SDR voters to show a form of identification before voting. The type of ID accepted by the Board of Elections included everything from a North Carolina Driver’s License to a utility bill. Shortly after the law was enacted, however, the State Board of Elections decided that the long list of accepted documentation for ID during SDR was not enough for college students, and made provisions for a college or university to provide a list of student names with addresses (for those students who live on campus) to the local Board of Elections. Then, if students registered and voted during One-Stop, the BOE would find their names on the list and that would be proof enough of their residence address.

In Pasquotank County, after the election, Gilbert checked the list provided to the BOE from Elizabeth City State University against the list of voters who voted in the November Election. Those who stated that the college address was their residence address when they voted and were not on the college list of accepted and enrolled students were investigated by the Pasquotank GOP. Before certification of the election results, the GOP challenged four voters who were not on the official college list, but used the college address as their residence address. All four of these challenges were sustained.

All of the 60 challenged voters in the April hearing used 1704 Weeksville Road, Elizabeth City, NC as their residential address. This is the ECSU address. As of November 2012, only two of the voters challenged were shown on the University residence list and one of those was not a citizen of the United States. While most of the cases were of former students using their old college addresses in order to vote, some were students living in dormitories and claiming permanent residency.

During the hearing, Gilbert testified that North Carolina case law provides the legal presumption that college students are not domiciled in the town where they attend college. Gilbert referred to Lloyd v. Babb (1979) and Hall v. Wake (1972) in his presentation. As part of his evidence, Mr. Gilbert used a report, “Residency for Election Purposes,” written by State Board of Election (SBOE) General Counsel Don Wright. Case law also provides that the person alleging the change in domicile (the student) bears the burden of proof in providing evidence of the change.

Gilbert hammered home the fact that North Carolina election law provides that there are four prongs to changing residency and they pertain to students too.  The voter must:

1. Abandon the first domicile
2. with the intent not to return to it,
3. acquire a new domicile, with the intent of
4. making the new domicile a permanent home.

Only three challenged students chose to appear before the County Board in April. The first voluntarily cancelled her registration after admitting that she lived in Portsmouth, Virginia at the time she voted in the General Election using the ECSU address. In legal terms, her challenge was sustained. Two voters testified that they lived in dorms at ECSU and worked for the University as Residence Hall Assistants and their challenges were dismissed. The board did accept one other voter’s residency claim.

Betsy Meads, a former Pasquotank Board member, assisted Gilbert with the challenges and said that they had spent more than 300 hours in researching the individuals’ residency claims. Mr. Gilbert and Ms. Meads said that they believed the students were being given bad information and advice. Meads said, “I hope the new SBOE will stress voter education so that the students and parents will get the information they need to make a lawful decision as to residency.” She also stressed that the SBOE should spend time retraining the local boards in the correct application of the law.

This one case shows how easy it is to commit voter fraud in North Carolina and raises the question of how many other students are breaking the law using other North Carolina college and university addresses. Meads said that Gilbert and she intend to begin an investigation into the voters using North Carolina State University dorm addresses.

By the numbers

59 of the challenged voters lived in one precinct and used the address of Elizabeth City State University (1704 Weeksville Road, Elizabeth City, NC 27909).

58 of the challenged voters who voted in Pasquotank County in November 2012 using a fraudulent address had the opportunity to change their address when they voted, but elected not to. In fact, they all signed an affidavit that they lived at the ECSU address – as a result they all committed felonies.

52 of the challenges were sustained by a unanimous vote of a board that consists of one Republican and two Democrats.

52 of these voters cannot be located as their first class mail was returned “undeliverable” or “no longer resides at this address”.

1 challenged voter was not a citizen of the United States.

1 challenged voter appeared and testified that she lived in Portsmouth, VA.

1 challenged voter admitted in writing that she lived and worked in California and used a Pasquotank address to vote via mail.

1 challenged voter, a recent ECSU graduate, registered in Miami, FL and registered in Pasquotank on the very same day, Oct 9, 2012. To register in Pasquotank he used online registration, which is illegal in North Carolina, but was allowed by the NC Board of Elections when used by the Obama Campaign in the fall of 2012. In the end, that person voted in Miami and did not vote in NC.

The post Cases Show How Easy Vote Fraud Is in NC appeared first on Civitas Institute.

Senate Bill 666 “Election Law Changes” may include one or two laudable suggestions (namely the elimination of Same Day Registration), but in trying to reinforce voter registration rules for college students, the legislation stumbles into other problems.

Now before the North Carolina General Assembly, SB 666 would prohibit state income tax dependency deductions for qualifying children who have registered to vote at an address different from their parents’ residence. Under state law, college students must register at their permanent address, which usually is the family home, not a dorm room.

In other words, SB 666 seeks to change tax policy through an election bill. Thus, it is unenforceable and potentially creates at least two different classes of young voters. SB 666 also would apply only to North Carolina citizens, given that we have no control over other states’ tax laws, so out-of-state students and their parents would not be affected by the legislation. SB 666 would also cause confusion because divorced parents whose children reside and register at one parent’s house but are claimed legally by the other parent as a dependent would fall under this bill.

Civitas believes that North Carolina election laws, policies and processes are in dire need of reform. But reforms must be effective, and directed at the real problems. NC residency issues have been ignored, but not in the statute books: NCGS 163-57 addresses residency issues that pertain to college students. North Carolina’s difficulties in this area are a result of the current State Board of Elections treating college students as a special class of voters. The new legislation, however, would only add to the problem by setting college students apart once again.

Furthermore, the bill addresses observers and precinct judges in such a way as to discourage participation in the process altogether. In recent years there have been numerous problems with the way observers have been treated at polling places (especially in Wake County). SB 666 suggests that if the local elections board determines that a precinct official expels or limits an observer without cause, the official’s pay would be withheld. Apart from withholding wages being outside of the law, we believe that it would be hard for any one of us to stand up to this type of scrutiny and second-guessing of our work. It is not easy for the local boards of election to fill these jobs as it is; adding a possible penalty will just make finding elections staff even more difficult.

SB 666 also seeks to eliminate all satellite One-Stop Voting stations in all 100 counties. But such “one size fits all” solutions seldom work. NC counties are of widely different sizes and have different voting patterns. Large counties would have an especially difficult time in suddenly adjusting to the elimination of the satellite sites.

Civitas agrees that North Carolina has huge problems with our elections – and college student voter registration is just one of them. Rather than pass SB 666, North Carolina should first craft a residency law that is easily understood by the electorate. Another good step would be to better inform young voters of their responsibilities: Instead of voter registration drives in high schools, the Boards of Elections should be required to conduct voter education drives.

The main sponsors – Sens. Bill Cook (R-Beaufort), Norm Sanderson (R-Carteret) and Ronald Rabin (R-Harnett) – may have had good intentions, but that isn’t enough. Legislation must also be well thought out and carefully crafted. Unfortunately, SB 666 is unenforceable and unwieldy, and could result in hurting the overall effort to improve the voting process. Lawmakers need to go back to the drawing board to draft a better law to address the many problems prevalent in the North Carolina electoral system.

For more on this issue, read the letter from a former county elections board official to the sponsoring senators.

The post The Devil’s in the Details of Senate Bill 666, “Election Law Changes” appeared first on Civitas Institute.

Remarks to House Committee on Elections,
State Legislative Building, Rm. 643
March 13, 2013 1:00 PM

Mr. Chairman and Members of the committee, on behalf of the Civitas Institute I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify.

I am here today for three purposes: To discuss the need for a government-issued photo ID for voting; to share polling data on photo ID; and to talk about the facts surrounding Georgia’s experience with government-issued photo ID and its relevance to the debate in North Carolina;

Why require a government-issued photo ID to vote?

Until recently North Carolina was primarily a rural state and our election system relied on small precincts with election officials who knew the precinct’s voters. We are no longer rural – and we no longer vote in our home precincts. In the 2012 general election, over 2.5 million voters out of the 4.5 million voters used One-Stop Voting sites. These sites, in many cases, are staffed by temporary help – not local precinct election officials. Voters can use any site anywhere in the county and can register and vote at the same time. The days of poll workers knowing voters ended in 2000 with the start of One-Stop Voting. With Same-Day Registration starting in 2008, One-Stop poll workers did not even have a complete list of potential voters.  One-Stop voting and Same Day Registration combined with the increased urbanization and mobility of the population have rendered obsolete the ability of poll workers to serve as an effective check on voter impersonation. We need to update our ballot access and ballot protection just as we have updated our ability to register to vote and to vote.

This is just not a case of voting problems; it is also that the safeguards put in place to protect our voter rolls have been mostly stripped away.  When the 1995 National Voter Registration Act, also known as Motor Voter, opened up the voter registration process, an important safeguard against fraudulent registrations – the requirement of a “verification” mailing to the voters residence address — was put into place. This safeguard was rendered null when the State Board of Elections allowed verification mailings to be sent first to PO Boxes and then to out-of-state addresses.

Another safeguard was in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which required new voters to submit either a drivers license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number to be a valid registration. The State Board no longer requires validation of Social Security numbers or drivers license numbers in order to vote. No effort to systematically clean up and correct voter rolls has been undertaken.

Another complication in our election system is the different classes of voters with differing requirements as to proof of identity.

If  voters register by mail they must show some sort of ID the first time they vote. But if they register any other way (including voter registration drives) they do not.

The deadline to register to vote in North Carolina is 25 days before the election, unless you don’t, and then you may register during the 17 days of One-Stop Voting.

Your address must be validated by a verification mailing, unless you vote first, then it doesn’t have to be verified – it is counted! This contradiction in law is due mostly to allowing voters to register at the same time they vote during One-Stop Voting and because registration ends 25 days before an election – not before One-Stop Voting. There is not time to complete the required verification process.

Some advocates for keeping our current system and not adopting a photo ID say our current practice of requiring voters to sign an authorization to vote sheet is sufficient security. This is a hollow suggestion, as poll workers do not have access to a signature to compare it to and state election officials have already said local election officials are not handwriting experts.

In changing the law we have created inequities in how we treat voters depending on how and when they register to vote.

It is time that North Carolina begins to treat all voters equally – requiring a government-issued photo ID of all voters prior to casting a vote will mean all voters are treated the same. It will also update our current election system to help protect the integrity of the process.

Polling Data: (PPT) The committee has these slides and if anyone would like a copy just let me know.  

[Crosstabs and data available here]

Slide 2: Dates poll was conducted.

Slide 3: Despite claims of over a half million voters without ID, our polling consistently shows 2% or less of registered voters lack a government-issued photo ID.

Slide 4: 2/3 of registered voters in our last poll supported requiring a photo ID. Elon polls of all adults consistently show support exceeding 70% as do other public opinion polls.

Slide 5: North Carolina voters overwhelmingly support strict voting laws even if it means some voters have to cast a provisional ballot.

Slide 6: By a slim margin voters do not believe problems with ineligible voters or voter fraud would cause citizens to question an election result. But the overall result is a statistical tie.

Slide 7: A clear majority thinks having a photo ID requirement would stop voter fraud.

Slide 8: By a 3-1 margin voters who answered said requiring a photo ID would increase the likelihood of them voting.

Slide 9: A photo ID requirement will give voters more confidence in election results.

Slide 10: When asked to describe in their own words what would make elections more secure, 47% of voters volunteered that Voter ID would make elections more secure

What follows is a summary of a Georgia PowerPoint presentation

And I would like to thank Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and his staff for their assistance in providing the information on the Georgia ID program.

Slide 2: This is background information on the Georgia Photo ID requirement adopted in 2006. Note that is says – “No voter is ever turned away from the polls…”

Slide 3: Since 2006 the total number of IDs issued by County Election Offices 29,611. Another 1,155 have been issued by the Georgia Department of Driver Services. This is in a state larger than NC and demographically very similar. In reality, despite claims, there were not hundreds of thousands getting free IDs.

Slide 4: Costs for Voter ID – the total spent since 2006 is $1.7 million, not the big numbers you hear thrown around. It should also be noted Georgia has 159 counties versus 100 in NC. If you are looking for money to pay for this, the Political Party Check-Off funds might be a good place to start.

Slide 5: Voter ID education and outreach efforts, including Atlanta Falcons football players. We have plenty of pro athletes in NC.

Slide 6: Demographic analysis of turnout from a pre-ID election to post-ID election.

 Voter turnout is up by double digits for minority voters.

Also in 2012 Georgia had a 72.2% voter turnout while North Carolina’s was 68.4%

As the years have passed, North Carolina has moved away from people voting in their home precincts; it has allowed the state voter rolls to be essentially just a list of names; and we have made numerous changes affecting registration and voting. What we have not done is update ballot and voter protections. While we need to make sure ALL legal voters are given an unfettered opportunity to exercise their franchise, we must also ensure that those very same voters do not have their votes cancelled by illegitimate votes.

I would like to close by touching on an immediate benefit of a requiring a photo ID for voting. People who currently lack a photo ID will be brought more fully into daily life. We require an ID for many activities, be it buying cold medicine or cashing a check. Those opposed to requiring the commonsense requirement for a government issued photo ID to vote like to talk about voter disenfranchisement. What they never mention is by helping these folks get a valid government photo ID they will be helping them get more fully integrated into society.

Or is it that they really don’t care if they fully participate in life? Is it that they just want them to show up once every couple of years to vote and slip quietly back into the shadows?

Do the right thing for EVERYONE – pass photo ID.

Thank you for your time and attention.

The post Civitas President Explains Need for Voter Photo ID appeared first on Civitas Institute.

When reporting on Blueprint NC’s leaked documents, WRAL was all over the story, with one exception: It somehow failed to mention in any of its stories that the owners of the station are deeply entangled with the left-wing group and some of its allies.

A strategy memo  from liberal policy group Blueprint North Carolina details the game plan of how a coalition of non-profits will “attack” elected officials in North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer broke the story and included these excerpts:

• “Crippling their leaders (McCrory, Tillis, Berger etc.).”
• “Eviscerate the leadership and weaken their ability to govern.”
• “Pressure McCrory at every public event.”
• “Slam him when he contradicts his promises.”
• “Private investigators and investigative reporting, especially in the executive branch…”

Later that day WRAL put reporter Mark Binker’s story about Blueprint NC online. But in its story WRAL left out important information about its long-running connection to Blueprint and to many of the organizations which comprise the Blueprint NC network. In a quick blog post last week I explained there was a deep and long connection between the Goodmon family-controlled Capitol Broadcasting and Blueprint NC and other activist liberal groups. WRAL is only one part of a media conglomerate. Capitol owns TV stations, radio stations and new media companies across North Carolina, plus other properties.

Also, the Goodmon family has four family members on the nine-member board of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation. According to the group’s web site, this includes Barbara Goodmon, the President; Jim Goodmon, the Chairman of the Board; and two Goodmon sons. The Executive Director of the Fletcher Foundation was formerly the head of the NC Center for Voter Education, which was an original Blueprint NC member. While the exact amount is hard to determine, the Fletcher Foundation has directly funded Blueprint NC and has given at least $1.7 million to Blueprint and other affiliated groups.

The connections go past just contributions. Chris Fitzsimon, a former WRAL reporter, is head of the liberal NC Policy Watch, the original lead attack group in the Blueprint coalition. Fitzsimon is provided free airtime on Goodmon-owned WRAL-FM from which he launches daily attacks on political opponents. The Fletcher Foundation has been a long time funder of Policy Watch, which is a project of the North Carolina Justice Center, also a large recipient of Fletcher Foundation grants.

Grants from A.J. Fletcher to Blueprint NC and Affiliates, 2008-2011 From the Civitas Institute (nccivitas.org)
Grantor	990 Year	Grantee	Amount
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2008	Common Cause NC	$25,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2008	NC Justice Center	$335,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2009	NC Housing Coalition	$70,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2009	NC Justice Center	$335,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2009	Ending Homelessness Raleigh Wake Fund TCF	$25,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2010	El Pueblo	$25,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2010	NC Justice Center	$380,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2010	NC Housing Coalition	$70,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2010	Blueprint NC	$35,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2011	Common Cause NC	$40,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2011	NC Justice Center	$308,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2011	NC Housing Coalition	$75,000
AJ Fletcher Foundation	2011	Wake Up Wake County	$10,000
			$1,708,000

In addition to the funding and personnel overlap, WRAL is also essentially doing one of the items in the strategy memo. The memo calls for its allies to track McCrory “Campaign Promises” and “slam him when he contradicts his promise.” WRAL appears to have taken that action by launching its “Promise Tracker,” complete with skull and crossbones symbols.

This is not the first time Civitas has written on Blueprint NC and its members. In January 2010 while researching ACORN, we reported on Blueprint NC along with this handy chart. Blueprint played a key coordinating role leading up to the 2008 election and its extensive network was very involved in “Get Out the Vote” activities in North Carolina. We also wrote a later article about Blueprint’s role in influencing the news you are getting.

In addition to “Promise Tracker,” WRAL has shown considerably more interest in the NC legislature since Republicans won the majority. After the 2010 election, the station hired a full-time Capital Bureau Chief, Laura Leslie, who previously worked for the local public radio affiliate. In 2012 they added Mark Binker, who was a reporter for the Greensboro News & Record. They assign additional personnel to stories as the need arises. From 2010 to today, WRAL went from no full-time legislative and state government coverage to two-plus reporters on the beat.

There is much lamenting among not only conservatives but also the public at large about the degradation of news coverage. A lot of complaints center on news reports not matching up with what people actually see around them. In the digital era, the ability of ordinary citizens to be their own “fact checkers” has hastened the trend towards more informed consumption of what we view, read and hear.

When a news outlet fails to give consumers all of the pertinent facts, it erodes trust in all of the reporting by that outlet and the media in general. With the Blueprint NC report there is real reason to wonder why WRAL did not report all the aspects of this story.

The post Missing Connection: WRAL and Blueprint NC, $1.7 million in support appeared first on Civitas Institute.

The SBE staff’s audacity is so breath-taking that it’s hard to believe, so let us emphasize:  The Civitas Institute has documented how SBE bureaucrats conspired with a private company, working for the Obama campaign[i], to facilitate a form of online voter registration for the 2012 General Election – in violation of state law. It’s a classic example of how bureaucrats ignore the democratic process and hijack an agency for partisan purposes.

Breaking the Law

Civitas initiated a series of public records requests to uncover this scheme concerning online registration in defiance of state law.

NCGS 163-82.6(b) clearly states that the only form where an electronically captured signature can be used is one offered by a state agency:

NCGS 163-82.6 (b) Signature – The form shall be valid only if signed by the applicant. An electronically captured image of the signature of a voter on an electronic voter registration form offered by a State agency shall be considered a valid signature for all purposes for which a signature on a paper voter registration form is used. [Emphasis added]

The major use for this is for voter registration when people get their drivers licenses.

Yet the SBE staff set in motion a scheme that in the last two months of the election resulted in more than 11,000 people being allowed to register online. Civitas has confirmed this by a public records request to all 100 counties and is still compiling the total number of registrations as counties comply with the request. Thus far, 68 percent of the registrations we have received were Democratic voters, 10 percent were Republican voters and 21 percent from unaffiliated voters.

Don Wright, SBE General Counsel, played word games when answering inquires about the Obama campaign’s own re-election site Gottaregister.com, which utilized the technology that SBE staff approved.  Wright repeatedly denied that the SBE allowed online voter registration, insisting that it was “web-based voter registration”[ii] instead, as if there could be a “web-based” process that wasn’t online.

The technology from Allpoint Voter Services uses remote-control pens to transmit “signatures” over the Internet, according to techpresident.com[iii]. After entering voter information in an online form, the citizen “signs” it with a stylus or a finger. The Allpoint technology records the signature and then transmits it to one of two autopens – one in California, the other in Nevada[iv]. One of the pens transcribes the signature on to a paper voter registration form. Allpoint then mails the documents to local election boards – or is supposed to, a point we’ll come back to.

To say this is not “online” registration but “web-based” is like saying a certain vehicle is not a car, it’s an automobile. The point of having a “wet signature” – one in ink – is to provide a universally accepted way proving that a prospective voter is affirming in person all the facts on the form. To have an auto pen inserted at one point in this long computerized process is a far different thing. Even the Obama campaign called it online voter registration. Because, no matter how you twist words around, that’s what it is.

North Carolina law does not authorize any kind of online voter registration, however “wet” or “web-based” it might be. Neither the term “wet signatures” nor the phrase “reduced to paper” appear in the NC General Statutes. The term “wet signature[v]” was put in use in the context of elections by Allpoint Voter Services promoting the product it was providing to the Obama campaign. “Wet signature” is a term that Wright returns to often, even in the legal opinion he authored to support the staff decision.

Following the Paper Trail

Click the image above for a larger version.

The scheme appears to go back at least three years, beginning with cautious probes into the topic. The oldest document found pertaining to online voter registration was uncovered in a previous, unrelated Civitas records request to the SBE.  It is a letter to Attorney General Roy Cooper[vi] from Gary Bartlett, Executive Director of the SBE, dated September 11, 2009, formally requesting an advisory opinion of the “effect NCGS 66-311 Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) upon possible electronic voter registration.”  That in itself is a bit odd, as UETA is the state law governing commercial transactions in general, and is in a totally different section of the state’s legal code from the election laws. Bartlett asked specifically whether UETA would make it permissible for a county board of elections to accept an electronically submitted voter registration application that has been electronically signed. Bartlett also asked the AG if voter registration is outside the scope of UETA.

Since we did not have a reply to Bartlett’s request, we submitted a records request on January 16, 2013, to the Attorney General’s Office. In answer to our request, Special Deputy Attorney General Susan Nichols informed Civitas that Bartlett orally withdrew the written request in question before a response was prepared.

The next documents[vii] in the timeline can be attributed to the Attorney General’s Office also. Nichols forwarded to Civitas a string of emails dated April 12 – 13, 2010. The emails were a conversation between Nichols and David Becker, Director of Election Initiatives for the Pew Center on the States. Nichols, on behalf of Gary Bartlett, was seeking contact with other states that had adopted UETA.  Bartlett wanted to know if the other states chose to also adopt new legislation to facilitate electronic voter registration. Yet why would Bartlett need the AG’s Office to be the go-between? Did he want to keep his profile low?

This inquiry into UETA also appeared to die after an email from Becker to Ms. Nichols. He included a list of states that had passed some form of online voter registration: Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

We could surmise from these two tentative inquiries that the SBE was hoping UETA would supersede NCGS 163-82.6, the only North Carolina election statute that speaks to the use of electronic voter registrations.  We might also suspect that the conversation stopped abruptly with both these inquiries because the SBE could not risk a written decision that would prevent it from forging ahead with its online voter registration scheme.

Party Politics

The SBE staff’s following move shows their deep collaboration with Obama allies. The next document pertaining to online voter registration was dated more than a year later, on August 23, 2011. Gary Bartlett was forwarded an email from Veronica Degraffenreid[viii], SBE Elections Liaison, with the link to consulting firm Catapult Strategies, specifically the page that introduces Jude Barry. Barry is Catapult’s CEO and co-founder and is co-founder of Verafirma and Allpoint Strategies.

Jude Barry’s political credentials would be considered stellar in Democratic/liberal circles. According to the Catapult site; “In December 2006, he created the Obama for America Draft Committee, the first political committee to raise thousands of dollars online to encourage then-Senator Obama to run for the Presidency.” The Catapult website elaborates on Barry’s political accomplishments[ix] by noting that he began his career in politics as Senator Edward Kennedy’s press aide and later deputy political director. He also worked on presidential bids by liberal Democrats Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean.

The next day, August 24, 2011, Peter Allen, Lead Organizer for Verafirma, contacted Gary Bartlett by email[x] in reference to a phone call he had with the SBE staff. Note that Allen is also an Associate on the Catapult Strategies team.

Catapult Strategies, Inc. describes itself as “a Silicon Valley-based social media, public relations, and political consulting firm with strong ties to and extensive knowledge of Silicon Valley business and political communities.”  Verafirma is a technology company whose projects include the use of electronic signatures for politics. The firm is featured on Catapult Strategies’ website as a “related company.”

On the Catapult site, Allen’s bio refers[xi] to Democratic connections too, “Peter has dedicated the past few years developing a rich understanding of online social media tools and how they can be used to empower and mobilize people on behalf of a candidate or cause. He saw this potential come to fruition as an organizer on Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign ….” Allen was on the Obama campaign’s payroll in May 2008.

It is important to note that in a September 26, 2012 email to Civitas[xii], Don Wright insisted that the SBE had not been contacted by any campaign, candidate, legislator, or political party.  That looks like another word game. Catapult Strategies could easily pass for the outreach and new media wings of the Obama Campaign.

There’s a money trail too: from October 2, 2012 to October 24, 2012, according to Federal Elections Commission data, there were 12 separate payments from the Obama campaign to Allpoint Voter Services, Inc. (See table below.)

Moreover, the number of payments raises another question.  That is, there isn’t a single fee or two, but a series of fees of varying sizes as Allpoint collected signatures. Was the Obama campaign paying Allpoint Voter Services for each registration collected? Doing so would be a violation of NCGS 163‑82.6 (a) (2), which states “To sell or attempt to sell a completed voter registration form or to condition its delivery upon payment” is a class 2 misdemeanor.

SBE attorney Don Wright, in response to inquiries as to whether there was any discussion with Allpoint Voter Services in reference to payments for registrations, said that he had no direct contact with the company but Gary Bartlett, Veronica Degraffenreid and Marc Burris were the staff members who talked directly with the company. According to Wright, the company was never asked if they were being paid for each registration delivered.

We do know that not all forms completed on the site were accepted. Some users were told to print and mail the form on their own. This shows that they were not intending to serve all citizens, but only ones that met a preselected criterion.

After a few short emails over a matter of a few days, but without ever having talked to the company himself, Wright produced a legal opinion approving the Allpoint Voter Services voter registration technology in North Carolina. His opinion dated September 16, 2011 [xiii] claimed it was reviewed by the North Carolina Attorney’s General Office, which concurred in it. That statement is untrue (as you will see later), but since this appears to be an internal SBE staff document it went unchallenged at the time.

On September 19, 2011, Bartlett forwarded Wright’s opinion to Peter Allen. The same day, Allen emailed back and asked for the point person they will be working with to make the SBE’s part “as painless as possible.” Bartlett responded that Degraffenreid and Burris would be the points of contact going forward.[xiv]

Election Year Revelations

A year went by without evidence of discussion about the new voter registration technology, however. No documents for the period from September 19, 2011 to September 11, 2012 were turned over as part of our public records request, almost a year of silence on this by the SBE staff.  This silence was broken with less than two months to go before the General Election.

Betsy Meads, a former Pasquotank County BOE member, was the first person to ask about the online voter registration process. It was a happenstance that her son ran across the gottaregister.com website. The next day, September 11, 2012, Betsy Meads sent an email[xv] questioning Don Wright as to the legality of the President’s online voter registration site.  She wrote, “This is contrary to the Statute as I read it, and as I was just in Chapel Hill at training for local board members August 14^th, I’m sure I didn’t hear anything about electronic registrations in NC being allowed.” The SBE held the Annual Training for Elections Officials on August 13-14, 2012.[xvi]

On September 13, 2012, Wright delivered an answer to Meads – which was also the answer he gave later to Civitas and one other person who would ask the question about registering to vote online in North Carolina: “There is no online voter registration[xvii] allowed in North Carolina ….” He also forwarded Ms. Meads the legal opinion he had written in 2011 which stated that the North Carolina Attorney’s General Office had concurred in it.

As previously referenced, the statement that the AG’s office had concurred is false. In an email I received from the Attorney General’s office, dated September 18, 2012, Susan Nichols informed Don Wright that she did not concur[xviii] in that decision. In fact, before she had taken her post with the AG, the AG’s office ended the procedure of allowing attorneys to state they concur in an opinion they did not author.

By the time Wright received Nichols’ email, revelations about the online registrations were breaking into the open.

In what appeared to be a move to head off any problems at the local level, on September 18, 2012 the SBE notified the 100 counties to expect a new kind of voter registration. Veronica Degraffenreid sent the email to the County Directors[xix], explaining, describing and defending the new registrations. This email explanation went out just over a month after the SBE had election representatives from across the state at a training session in Chapel Hill – at which they never mentioned this new kind of registration.

Her email went out a day after Gary Bartlett received an email from George Gilbert, Guilford County BOE Director, reporting that they had received “a good number of registration forms from Allpoint Voter Services.” Gilbert went on to say they contained signatures that were “immediately suspect.[xx]” The timing of the responses to Meads and to the counties raises the question of when, if ever, the state SBE would have brought the online registrations to the notice of the counties. Were SBE bureaucrats hoping no one would bring up the online registrations until after all the votes were certified?

Subsequently other counties questioned these forms and offered some observations about problems with them. For example, the Duplin County BOE Director said, “The part we find the most questionable is the similarity of all the signatures ….” Rockingham County wrote, “The forms have info typed in and the signatures all resemble each other and it appears the envelope was addressed with the same marking pen.” Rockingham County also noted one signature did not match the voter’s registration with the DMV.

There are many problems and questions about the decision that the SBE bureaucrats’ made in relation to registering to vote online. For instance, Betsy Meads used gottaregister.com to change her party affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated.  Once she “signed” her iPhone, she was informed that her registration would be forwarded to her local BOE. That didn’t happen: 36 hours later she received an email with a link to her registration.  She was told to print the form, sign it and then mail it to the SBE. Did the Obama Campaign prioritize registrations? Did they send some registrations directly to the elections board and decide that others could be sent to the voters?

Perhaps most disturbing, the SBE staff apparently tried to keep this all from the view of the public and even county elections boards until mere weeks before the election, which raises the disturbing question of whether those involved were aiding a last-minute registration surge planned by the Obama campaign.

This is not an isolated incident[xxi], but just one more example of how the SBE staff flouts the law, the legislature and their own board in order to further a partisan agenda. All North Carolina citizens should be aware of the importance of reforming the SBE so that it carries on its duties in a transparent manner, with full regard for the democratic process and in a way that instills trust in the North Carolina election system.

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A Civitas investigation has revealed how lobbyist Bob Hall, Director of the liberal advocacy group Democracy North Carolina, is a behind-the-scenes driving force at the State Board of Elections (SBE) – even to mapping out partisan attacks on Republican legislators to the extent that it is hard to tell where the SBE ends and Democracy NC begins.

In 2012 Hall, a registered lobbyist led an attack on Republican legislators over a budget issue. In planning the lobbying campaign, Hall coordinated with the State Board of Elections staff on tactics and information. Although the actual planning of the legislative campaign began in earnest in January 2012, the public campaign and coordination started in 2011, as seen in this AP article . The article was attached to an email from a vendor sent to the State Controller’s Office, from which it was enthusiastically forwarded to the SBE. The article gives SBE Executive Director Gary Bartlett and lobbyist Hall a platform to push the story that the state-passed budget may cause an election “train wreck,” in the words of Hall.

A January 5, 2012 email from Neil Baddour of the SBE staff gave information to Bartlett, which he forwarded to Hall on Saturday, January 14, 2012. Fifty-six minutes later the real effort got under way when Hall sent a  “confidential” email  and attached strategy memo to Bartlett, which Bartlett forwarded on January 17 to SBE Deputy Director Johnnie McLean. What was the memo that was attached? It was the game plan  from Hall for trying to get the legislature to spend an extra $660,000, and the political strategy for attacking Republicans in the media. The very same day McLean responded via email directly to Hall saying: “We have reviewed your document and identified a few changes you may want to make.”

We know that at least two SBE employees (Bartlett and McLean) reviewed the memo and it is likely that others also contributed to the edited memo attached. For state employees to conduct partisan political work on state time and equipment is a clear violation of the law (NCGS 126.13). To have state employees do it at the behest and direction of a lobbyist is even worse.

The memo itself contains two direct partisan mentions, one complimenting the 2008 Democratic-controlled legislature and the other critical of the Republican leaders in the current General Assembly. And to make it clear that staff had no doubt that this was a partisan effort; the memo itself contained strategy language at the bottom of the memo that includes the following partisan strategy items:

• Media/Editorials: … exposes the selfish partisan agenda of Republicans; fits into the larger story of voter suppression, etc.
• We win even if we lose: Even if we don’t get the money, this fight hits the GOP where they are most vulnerable to voter anger over appearing to suppress voting; it will help with the ID fight.

Hall’s involvement with governmental agencies does not stop with the SBE. He forwarded an email (from Director Bartlett to Rep. David Lewis) on November 15, 2011 to Amy Bason, General Counsel to the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC), to enlist their help to “release the funds.” In the email to Bason, Hall says he gained access to the forwarded email through a public records request. But Civitas has found no evidence of any public records requests made by Hall to the SBE for emails from Lewis specifically or legislators in general. It appears that Bartlett just forwards his email from legislators to a lobbyist for their review and use.

So to summarize, lobbyist Bob Hall and SBE Director Gary Bartlett conspired on a strategy to boost funding for Bartlett’s agency and directly attack the Republican legislature. All of this was done at the direction of Hall with SBE staff assistance and with Bartlett the conduit. The legislative fight over the HAVA (Help America Vote Act) funds actually happened later in 2012 after the legislature convened in May.

The HAVA fight played out as the budget was being crafted, Hall led the attack and the SBE played a supporting role. In the end, fortunately, sound budgeting won the day and despite the gloomy predictions of Hall and his allies the 2012 election went smoothly without the additional money.

The collaboration between Hall and the SBE raises serious questions about who really runs North Carolina’s election system: Officials representing the people, or unelected liberal special-interest lobbyists working out of the public’s sight?

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The North Carolina State Board of Election (SBE) is really two different organizations. To the public it is the appointed State Board of Elections consisting of political appointees of the governor representing the two major parties in North Carolina. More importantly, it is the bureaucratic staff that dominates both the election machinery and increasingly the way campaigns are conducted in North Carolina.

It is important to know that the North Carolina State Board of Elections is said to be one of the most authoritative boards of its kind in the country. It is an independent state agency and does not come under the jurisdiction of any other department headed by an elected official.

In 1986 the state elections staff consisted of five people and a moderate budget. In 2012 SBE staff is approaching 60 employees and pay and benefits exceed $3.5 million. While a poster child for how state government has grown over the last several decades, what is more worrisome is how the staff operates when making decisions that affect the very foundation of our democratic system of representative government.

Civitas has used the public records law to request information to piece together how decisions were made and actions taken by the staff of the SBE. What we found was a decision process that was heavily influenced, and in some cases directed, by one lobbyist for special interest groups. These actions even included the drafting of materials paid for by taxpayers and the planning of legislative lobbying and media campaigns. In addition, critical decisions that affected elections were kept out of public view and were not taken to the SBE for approval.

Getting the information was not easy. The SBE staff attempted to stonewall, delay and illegally charge Civitas for information that the law clearly says is public. Despite our persistence we believe that there are records that were not provided despite the law’s clear readings. But the records that were provided were enough to paint a disturbing picture of a supposedly professional staff that acted in anything but a professional way.

The first conclusive indication that there was trouble in the SBE staff was the response to a public records request made concerning communications involving lobbyist Bob Hall of the liberal advocacy group DemocracyNC.

The initial request was made of seven questions or requests for copies of emails. The request was made by email to Don Wright, the SBE’s General Counsel, on December 5, 2011. The first response from Mr. Wright was received on December 20, 2011. His response included an estimate of charges that would total approximately $4,800. The sticking point was the retrieval of emails. The estimate included a rate of $60 an hour for 60-80 hours of work. After some discussion, the request for emails was revised and we asked only for emails to and from Bob Hall or Democracy NC. During the month of January the SBE moved its offices and Mr. Wright underwent surgery, but on January 25 Mr. Wright forwarded the answers to all the initial questions except for the request of emails concerning Bob Hall. On March 13 we were informed that they had run the preliminary search and had retrieved 3,956 emails and it would cost approximately $1,500.

After an attempt to pare the request down and more back and forth about the estimated costs, we sought advice from a State House member. On June 5, Rep. David Lewis, Chairman of the House Elections Committee, forwarded an email with his opinion on our public records request to the SBE.

Rep. Lewis’ email resulted in the SBE withdrawing their demand for money, but still, we didn’t receive the emails until the second week of August 2012. At that time we received over 5,000 emails to and from Bob Hall or Democracy NC with attachments. There were duplicate emails but well over half of them were unique.

The attached emails show a SBE staff more interested in hiding and foot-dragging than in disclosure in accordance with the law.

In our second story in the series we will see why they felt compelled to try and resist disclosing these communications. It sets the stage for looking at a SBE staff interested in fighting a political fight rather than carrying out implementation of the law in a non-partisan, efficient manner.

The post NC SBE – Who is really in charge and who do they work for? appeared first on Civitas Institute.

As the rest of the South moved solidly Republican in recent decades, North Carolina held out, remaining reliably Democratic at the state and local level except for brief fits and starts. Election 2012 may have changed that — but Republican leaders will have to work hard to make the change a lasting one, rather than just another bump in the road for NC Democrats like others over the last 30 years.

That’s important for North Carolina, because in other Southern states voters have rewarded a message of limited government linked to more freedom and prosperity. Meanwhile, North Carolina, once a leader in the region, has seen government and regulation grow and its economy stagnate under Democratic leadership.

There have been many political experts who have analyzed North Carolina’s political history and interpreted it as proof that it is fundamentally different than the rest of the South – that it is a “purple” state, not red or blue. I believe that North Carolina’s failure to follow the rest of the South is not necessarily demographic as much as it is cultural and political. The Democrats in North Carolina had always been very careful to keep a distance from national Democrats. They also went out or their way to cultivate the business community. These two actions meant that the outward appearance was of a North Carolina Democratic Party that was not that much different from other states’ Republican parties. Internally, it was much different, but that difference has only become apparent to the general public over the last few election cycles. As voters are given more information and decide there is a difference, we will most likely see a shift towards the GOP as we have seen in other Southern states.

First, a quick look back. As the South moved solidly Republican, North Carolina made fits and starts towards joining the rest of the south. In 1972, the state barely elected a Republican governor, but only for one term. Then in 1984 the state elected a Republican governor and in 1988 added a Lieutenant Governor and enough state House members to forge a coalition with dissident Democrats to take control of the House. These changes were short-lived and by the end of 1992 Democrats were firmly back in charge.

1994 brought a Republican tidal wave and control of the NC House and one vote short of a tie in the NC Senate. This Republican wave even extended down to local offices.  Again, however, the realignment was only temporary. In 1998 Republicans lost the House majority. Republicans continued to gain in elections through the first decade of the 21^st century. They started picking up statewide elections and actually won control of the state House — until a few GOP members defected and joined with Democrats in electing a “Co-Speakership” in 2003-4 that in reality put the Democrats back in charge, most crucially in the case of redistricting.

Democrats drew legislative boundaries friendly to their candidates, and the status quo returned. By the middle of the decade Republicans were dominating judicial elections, so in a highly partisan move, the Democrat-dominated legislature removed the party label from every judicial office candidate in the state. Without that vital information on the ballots, voting in those races plummeted.

During this time North Carolina’s population ballooned from 5.8 million in 1980 to 9.5 million in 2010. Many of these new residents migrated to the urban areas of the state. They never saw or read anything about Republicans except for the negative impressions given by the large newspapers and TV stations. They had little incentive to support local Republicans even while they supported national Republicans. Despite that, many did, In addition, native Tar Heel Democrats have long been relatively conservative, and many grew more receptive to the GOP message as the national Democratic Party lurched to the left. North Carolina became no longer securely Democratic at the state level.

With the 2010 election, Republicans swept into power in both chambers of the General Assembly. This gave them the power to draw legislative districts, a move which on election night 2012 helped bring in GOP supermajorities in both the House and Senate. The Republican majority also governed in a way that was appealing to both the swing voters that have moved to the state and to native North Carolinians who held conservative views.

In the 2011-2012 sessions, the new Republican legislature balanced the budget without raising taxes and they tackled many festering but long-ignored problems. The GOP majority started fixing the state employee health care plan and reforming Medicaid to slow its out-of-control growth. They passed education reform initiatives to make traditional public schools more efficient and transparent, while giving families more options of where to educate their children. The General Assembly gave voters the right to decide a Marriage Amendment that had languished for a decade in the Democrat-controlled legislature. (Voters approved it by almost a 2-1 majority.) The GOP also passed medical malpractice, tort and workers compensation reform. All of this was accomplished despite numerous vetoes from Gov. Bev Perdue.

As a result of the complete legislative takeover, the media had to cover Republican policies. Before that, many citizens only read the headlines and glanced at political ads as elections neared, but with the GOP in charge news audiences began to hear about Republican policy initiatives. Even though the reporting was often slanted, the initiatives still sounded good to a large majority of voters. Also key has been the rise of an alternative media that is a source of information to voters, especially the most active voters. It helped that in the 2012 campaign the Republicans were able to get their message out. Prior to 2012 they had always been massively outspent by Democrats, but not this year.

This brings us to the historic election of this month. For the first time a Republican gubernatorial candidate ran ahead of the presidential candidate in North Carolina. Along with super majorities in the legislature, a Republican Lieutenant Governor and numerous local Republicans were voted into office. Voters rewarded the actions and campaigns of Republican politicians. Why will now be different?

First, the media will have little choice but to give more coverage to Republican initiatives. Also, before now the North Carolina GOP did not have a clear advocate for its policies. While there are individual GOP legislators who are excellent, no lawmaker can command a pulpit as big as the one a governor has. Governor-elect McCrory has an opportunity to not only make North Carolina a great place to live and work, he has an opportunity, working with the legislative leadership, to establish the Republican Party as the dominant party in North Carolina as it is in other Southern states.

How does this happen? The governor and legislative leaders will have to embrace bold policies that address the problems that have plagued North Carolina fiscally and educationally. They will need to advance a program that empowers families and creates a climate that encourages a more prosperous North Carolina that offers an opportunity for all of its citizens to thrive. They have to advance a freedom agenda that makes North Carolina an island of prosperity in a nation that appears to be rapidly becoming a sea of high taxes and red ink.

While pursuing good policy, they will have to also remind voters that these things just did not happen in a vacuum, they happened because voters trusted them to do what they said, and they did. Time will tell if North Carolinians trust Republicans going forward, or if this election is just another blip.

The post Will Republicans Become a Lasting Majority in North Carolina? appeared first on Civitas Institute.

A new Civitas Institute study has confirmed what critics have been saying for years: North Carolina’s Same Day and Last-Minute Voter Registration processes are seriously flawed.

In July 2007, the North Carolina Legislature passed House Bill 91, (Registration and Voting at One-Stop Sites). The law allowed voters to register and vote during a one-stop early voting procedure called Same Day Registration (SDR).

After the 2008 General Election, the State Board of Elections (SBOE) issued a favorable report echoing the glowing reviews of a focus group made up of the following liberal groups:  Democracy NC, NAACP, NC Fair Share and NC Center for Voter Education. Unfortunately, the SBOE has ignored criticism of the process, including recommendations made by a group of 10 counties who also met in 2009 (at the request of the SBOE) to discuss SDR.

The 10 counties raised questions about the validity of some of the registrations and ultimately some votes. According to one county, there were “numerous undeliverable voter registration cards returned after the canvass time-frame which allowed the voter’s vote to count and it should not have.” And another county voiced a similar concern: “We have one-stop voter verification cards which did not complete their mailing cycle prior to canvass day.”

The counties are highlighting an egregious flaw in the process: Voters who register to vote and vote during SDR bypass the necessary address verification process — which all other voters must undergo — when registering to vote. SDR voters do not go through this process because there is not enough time to complete the verification process before the certification of the election. So there are thousands of SDR voters who have had their registrations “denied” — but only after their votes were counted and the election certified. Once an election is certified, the votes stand.

The way some counties handled the registration and verification process during early voting meant ballots from some voters who were not properly verified, but their votes still counted.

The Civitas Institute’s research into the 2008 vote showed that SDR does not allow for completion of the verification process — not only for “Same-Day” registrants but also for voters who register during the last days before the voter registration deadline (25 days prior to Election Day). These voters registered to vote in accordance with state law and were then eligible to vote as soon as eight days later, on the first day of One-Stop Voting. This resulted in more than 6,000 new voters being “denied,” but only after their votes were counted in 2008. And even more voters were placed in inactive status because the county boards of elections were unable or did not follow administrative procedures.

We wanted to take another look at SDR during the May 2012 Primary Election, to see if the county election boards were able to comply with verification procedures. But, given the SBOE’s lack of interest in this problem, this time we wanted to take the SBOE out of the equation, and contact voters directly.

We chose five counties — Buncombe, Durham, New Hanover, Pasquotank and Wake — to include in our own mailing to check on voters’ status. Our plan was to see how many voters’ letters would be returned as undeliverable, indicating they were not at the address they gave to election officials. We would mail to two sets of voters: First, those who registered to vote at the end of the regular registration time, between March 1 and April 13, 2012 (the deadline to register to vote), and, second, those voters who registered to vote during SDR.

We had to look in two places to obtain the voters’ names and addresses: 1) The SDR voters were in the absentee voter file provided by the State Board of Elections during absentee voting. 2) The March and April registrants were also obtained through the SBOE’s FTP site in voter registration files.

In order to reach voters by mail, we needed something to send them. A survey made sense to us. We mailed two different surveys to the two groups of voters, but the questions in each were similar. Questions included: why they registered to vote, how satisfied they were with the registration process, and whether they thought a voter should be required to show ID to vote.

It is important to note that only one piece of mail was mailed to the voters and the county boards would be required to send at least one more follow-up mailing before moving a voter from active to inactive or denied status. Nevertheless, a single mailing provides a strong indication of what is happening.

The first surveys were mailed on April 20 and 21 to voters who registered to vote between March 1 and April 13, 2012 (the deadline to register to vote). A total of 17,531 surveys were mailed to these voters and 531 were returned to us as undeliverable — a 3.06 percent rate.

To put that in perspective, in the 45 days leading up to the 2008 General Election voter registration deadline more than 200,000 people registered to vote. So in a general election with a return rate of 3.06 percent would number approximately 6,000 verification mailings returned as “undeliverable”.

Then a total of 5,019 surveys were mailed to SDR voters. The surveys were mailed on three different dates – two dates before Election Day and the last on May 12, four days after the Primary Election. These mailings produced 365 undeliverable pieces of mail — a rate of 7.3 percent (more than twice the rate of those who registered during the normal registration process).

In the 2008 General Election more than 103,000 people registered to vote using the SDR system. A return rate of 7.3 percent would mean nearly 8,000 voter cards returned as undeliverable.

We believe that these results are valid and reasonable and suggest that statewide thousands of people were improperly registered in 2008 and in every subsequent election since 2008 – enough to swing elections.

Look at the difference in the presidential vote in 2008 — President Obama won North Carolina by only 14,173 votes. And in other past Council of State races, even smaller numbers of voters could have changed the outcome. This includes the 2004 race for Commissioner of Agriculture, where Steve Troxler won by only 2,287 votes, and in 2000 in the Commissioner of Labor contest, where Cherie Berry won by just over 7,000.

Civitas believes that Same Day Registration results in treating voters differently and has ultimately created yet a new class of voters – a class whose residency and qualification to vote are not properly verified. We also believe that SDR will lead to questionable election outcomes and should be eliminated immediately in order protect the integrity of our elections.

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