In an article from The Insider, written by Michael Biesecker of the Associated Press and Jodi Leese Glusco of WRAL, it was reported that Gov. Pat McCrory was not familiar with some provisions in the landmark election reform bill, HB 589 Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA), passed by both the state Senate and House last week.
They quoted McCrory as saying; “There is plenty of opportunity for voter registration — online, offline, through many methods.” And then the writers go on to proclaim that “North Carolina has never allowed voters to register online.”
Mr. Biesecker and Ms. Glusco might be embarrassed to know that they got this little piece of information in their “gotcha” article wrong.
In mid-February this year, Civitas released a study that documented how State Board of Elections (SBOE) bureaucrats conspired with a private company, working for the Obama campaign, to facilitate a form of online voter registration for the 2012 General Election – in violation of state law.
“In a blatantly partisan move, the staff of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) successfully subverted state law to facilitate online voter registration in North Carolina by the 2012 Barack Obama campaign. In doing so they coordinated with partisans behind closed doors, lied about the NC Attorney General’s Office concurring with the SBE staff on the issue, and dodged oversight by their own board and the legislature. The end result was to add thousands of people to the North Carolina voter rolls illegally.”
Evidently, Biesecker and Glusco aren’t aware that the legislature took steps in HB 589 to prohibit this kind of online voter registration. NCGS 163-82.6(b) was rewritten to make sure that the SBOE will not allow such an end-run around the law to happen again. Part 13 of the legislation was named “Wet Ink” on Voter Registration Forms and makes it very clear that only state generated forms and forms included in Article 21A of the North Carolina election code (Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act) can include an electronically captured signature.
In their article, Biesecker and Glusco went on to point out that the Governor wasn’t familiar with the provision that would put an end to registering 16- and 17-year-olds. The real question is: Who else would be familiar with this law but the ultra-liberal organizations who pushed this legislation through the legislature in 2009 in order to obtain personal information about teenagers that they couldn’t get anywhere else?
HB 589 brings quite a few changes to North Carolina’s election law – most of which will not been reported on by the mainstream media. And, we can be sure that any reporting they do will come straight from the liberal-left’s talking points.
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