A wide-ranging North Carolina election bill seemed headed for passage at lightning speed Tuesday morning in Raleigh. But now, it’s stopped in its tracks.
Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, told Carolina Public Press that the election bill is still headed to its final destination, but is taking a brief rest stop while she and several other lawmakers work behind the scenes with bill sponsor Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, to fix what they see as some lingering issues.
House Bill 958, which now includes scores of election-related provisions, has gone through a handful of iterations since it was filed during the 2025 legislative session. Thus far, it’s proven to be a rare example of bipartisan collaboration.
Blackwell doesn’t have to let Democrats contribute; House Republicans have the votes to pass the bill without them, Harrison said.
But she appreciates being allowed to contribute, she said.
“I prefer bipartisan elections legislation, because everybody’s so skeptical about elections legislation being meant to favor one party or the other,” she said.
Wednesday, a different controversial election bill was pulled from the schedule.
House Bill 1038 would shift Jacksonville’s elections from a hybrid system with some ward-based districts and some at-large districts to all at-large districts. The city’s Black residents say it would dilute their voting power.
It’s unclear why the bill was removed, or whether it will return.
Onslow County NAACP president M. Kenyatta Euring said it was a positive sign, but remains focused in case the bill comes back around.
Stop, collaborate and listen on election bill
This year’s election omnibus isn’t the worst election bill Harrison has seen, she said.
A 2013 omnibus that implemented photo ID voter requirements, eliminated same-day registration, reduced the early voting period and removed pre-registration for 16 and 17-year olds — although some of those provisions were struck down by courts — was much worse, she said.
So was 2024’s Senate Bill 382, which transferred election appointment power from the governor to the state auditor during the lame duck period after Democrats picked up seats in the 2024 election but before they could take office in January. That bill flipped the state’s election boards from Democratic to Republican majorities.
“If we can fix the worst parts, we might get a place where a lot of people could vote for it,” Harrison said of the current version of the election bill.
From the beginning of the process, Blackwell has been open to discuss the bill with his colleagues, including Democrats.
Blackwell hasn’t just listened; he’s incorporated some changes. For example, he stamped his approval on additional due process for people identified as potential non-citizens when registering to vote, and various other minor changes in a bill amendment on Tuesday.
Now, ongoing discussions about further changes are holding up the bill, Harrison said.
Several election activists conducted a Wednesday morning press conference sharing their opposition to the election bill.
Brian Kennedy, Democracy North Carolina senior policy advisor, outlined several things the bill doesn’t do.
“This bill does nothing to protect lawfully cast ballots from being thrown out after an election because politicians are unhappy with the results,” he said.
“This bill does nothing to address the concerns that counties have on how to pay their election officials and how to ensure that everybody has access to the ballot. This bill has done nothing to protect the people of North Carolina from voter suppression or from voter dilution.”
Turnout statements ban
State and county election board members would be barred from making public statements “encouraging or promoting turnout in any election,” under the current election bill.
Election staff and activists expressed concern that the ban was too vague, and would end up penalizing board members for benign acts like posting early voting schedules on social media.
The ban is like owning a restaurant and not being allowed to go online and encourage people to eat dinner, said Kat Roblez, Forward Justice senior voting rights counsel, during a press conference Wednesday morning.
During Tuesday’s committee hearing, Blackwell said they were still trying to find agreement on the issue.
“For them to be engaged in turnout-the-vote efforts runs the risk that somebody feels that the board in charge at the time is targeting constituencies that are favorable to it,” Blackwell said. “So the idea here is we let our separate parties and candidates be responsible for trying to gin up the turnout, which is not a bad thing, but that we say the State Board doesn’t get involved in the turnout process.”
Harrison is fine with a related provision in the election bill that would ban public statements influencing voter turnout for a particular political party, but not general turnout encouragement.
She believes they’ve found a fix. Blackwell may take out the ban on general turnout encouragement while keeping the partisan turnout part in, she said.
State Board political hires
Harrison said Blackwell has agreed to reduce the number of employees that State Board Executive Director Sam Hayes can hire based on party or personal loyalty.
In the current election bill, there are 25 of these so-called exempt positions or political hires. Harrison said they’ve agreed to bring it back down to seven exempt positions.
Hayes has previously told Carolina Public Press that exempt positions give him more flexibility in filling out senior leadership positions without as much bureaucratic red tape.
Less time for post-election challenges
Under current state law, certain election challenges must be filed by Election Day. The omnibus adds five days, but Harrison would like to make it shorter.
During committee, she raised her concern, citing the case of Jefferson Griffin, who filed various election protests after his narrow 2024 election loss for state Supreme Court, seeking to remove thousands of ballots from the count.
“We’ve got a lot of local elections that might be decided, or even state legislative elections that can be decided by less than 50 votes, and it just seems like there’s an incentive to go out and hunt down when maybe there’s nothing there,” Harrison said. “We just saw that happening with Griffin.”
There could be movement in that part of the election bill, Harrison said.
Venue for appeals
One part of the election bill reverses a longstanding tradition where all appeals of State Board of Elections decisions go first to the Wake County Superior Court.
Instead, petitioners could take the appeal to whichever county they were from. Harrison said this could encourage venue shopping, the practice where people try to win court cases by picking a venue where they believe they’ll find the most amenable judge.
“I just want to point out that we’ve got pretty powerful national parties, Republicans and Democrats,” Harrison told committee members. “You could get Marc Elias coming down here and picking the best venue, and vice versa. And whoever’s in charge here changes a lot.”
Harrison said the venue provision may get revisited.
Private counsel
Finally, the current draft of the omnibus election bill allows the State Board of Elections to hire private counsel when it gets involved in litigation.
Before, the attorney general typically provided that counsel. Harrison wants to make sure that the attorney general is not completely shut out of the process.
Also, documents associated with private counsel would not be public record under the bill. Harrison said they’re working on at least having publicly available information about who is getting paid and how much.
Roblez also expressed opposition to this provision.
“It is not normal for taxpayers to be paying for private counsel for government agencies,” she said.
Less likely changes in election bill
Harrison expects talks to continue through the weekend.
While it’s less likely, they’re still working on changing the auditor’s ability, under the current bill, to select whichever counties he likes for post-election audits. Harrison thinks it should be random.
“The auditor’s ability to randomly audit is really problematic for a partisan office when he’s been campaigning,” she said.
She also is pushing for the list of acceptable photo IDs for voters casting ballots in the U.S. and overseas and military voters to be the same. Currently, military and overseas voters have fewer options. While Blackwell did expand the list a bit during committee, he said some forms of ID still don’t make as much sense for abroad voters, like college IDs.
Veto math: 3 potential fates for election bill
Rep. Shelly Willingham, D-Edgecombe, voted for the omnibus to progress out of the House Elections committee Tuesday without any of the revisions that Harrison and other Democrats have been pushing since then.
He told members of the North Carolina Black Alliance that he is likely to vote for it again when it makes it to the House floor for a full vote, NCBA deputy director Marcus Bass said.
Willingham was one of a trio of Democrats who lost their primary elections after siding with Republicans on various veto override votes. Since Republicans are one seat shy of a supermajority in the state House, they need just one Democrat’s support to override any governor veto.
Willingham may cast that vote.
“I think that’s a misuse of his political power,” Bass said.
Gov. Josh Stein is very likely to veto the bill in its current version. He signaled his disapproval of the election omnibus in a statement posted on social media Tuesday.
“People should be able to trust our elections and know their vote counts,” he said. “Yet, this bill erodes trust by injecting more politics into the State Board of Elections and limiting access to the ballot box.”
Stein specifically called out parts of the bill that require military and overseas voters to provide more documentation to vote, grant the ability for the State Board to make political hires and give the auditor more election oversight.
If a more collaborative election bill emerges, it’s unclear what action the governor would take.
After a bill passes, the governor has 10 days to decide whether to sign or veto it, or let it become law without his signature. However, if the legislature has adjourned for the year and the governor does nothing, the bill would not become law.
According to lawmakers’ current schedule, session would adjourn right before the Independence Day holiday, on July 2 or 3. If lawmakers want to be able to override the governor’s veto after that 10-day period, they must pass the bill by next Wednesday, June 24.
The House is not scheduled to meet again until next Tuesday, and the Senate is likely to want to amend the bill once they receive it, which adds a few procedural steps. It’s possible lawmakers could run out of time to get the bill across the finish line.
So, lawmakers have a few options.
First, they could move back the end of session, giving themselves more time to pass a bill and wait for the governor to act so they can override his veto, if needed. However, many lawmakers have travel or vacation plans in early July that could interfere with veto override math.
Second, lawmakers could copy and paste the language of the omnibus into another bill that’s further along in the process, like the budget. That would require the governor to make a tough choice between signing a budget North Carolinians have been asking for, poison pills and all, or vetoing it, which could open himself and his party up for criticism during a critical campaign season for Democrats.
Third, state senators could abandon the election bill once it makes it over to their side of the legislature, and lawmakers could try again next year.
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