Would you trust someone who knocks on your door, asks for your ballot, and says that she will submit it for you? Would you trust an election system that allows illegal activity to take place largely unpunished?
The late-February N.C. State Board of Elections hearing on election fraud in the 9th Congressional District exposed deficiencies in our system of absentee voting. Those shortfalls leave North Carolinians vulnerable to exploitation by political hacks and destroy the public’s belief in the integrity of our elections.
An Elon University Poll released on March 1 found that most North Carolinians, including 61 percent of Democrats, believe that election fraud is a major problem in our state. Perhaps more disturbing, only 18 percent of respondents said that they were “very confident” that future elections would be fair.
Our democratic system depends on the confidence people have that their collective voices will be heard by those in power. Widespread doubt about the integrity of our elections undermines that confidence.
The problem goes much further than Bladen and Robeson counties and requires more than a few tinkers to our voting system to fix. State Board of Elections officials have found examples of absentee ballot fraud in counties across the state. In perhaps the most extreme example, officials found that a 2010 sheriff’s race in Yancey County involved absentee vote buying, including exchanging votes for drugs.
Now the General Assembly has an opportunity to make things right.
During a recent report to the General Assembly’s House Committee on Elections and Ethics Law, Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach proposed some much-needed reforms. However, Strach’s recommendations do not do enough to protect voters from absentee ballot fraud. Current law makes it easy for political operatives to commit absentee ballot fraud and relatively difficult for officials to investigate and prosecute them. To correct those oversights in the law, there are additional reforms to North Carolina’s absentee voting by mail system that should be implemented by the General Assembly.
First, limit who can submit absentee ballot requests. Require local boards of election to only accept absentee ballot requests from individual voters or their near relatives. McCrae Dowless, the man at the heart of the alleged absentee ballot fraud scheme in the 9th Congressional District, submitted 592 absentee ballot requests in Bladen County in the 2018 general election. These kinds of massive request submissions provide ballot harvesters with a large list of individuals whose ballots they can later collect.
Second, make absentee ballot requests private. The names and addresses of everyone who requests an absentee ballot is public information, providing ballot harvesters with additional lists of targets. Making that information private until the voter has submitted his or her ballot would help protect the integrity of those ballots.
Third, limit who can witness balloting. Ban individuals working for candidates, parties, or interest groups from witnessing ballots. Those who work for candidates or parties are working for the interests of candidates, not voters. People working as multipartisan teams, groups set up by local boards of election to assist voters, and those working for boards of elections would be exempt from this restriction.
Fourth, end “granny farming.” Make it a felony for individuals working for candidates, parties, or interest groups to mark the absentee ballot of patients in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes or rest homes or to “assist” those patients in marking their ballots. Again, people working as multipartisan teams and those working for boards of elections would be exempt.
North Carolina voters deserve to know that their votes will not be negated by absentee ballot fraud. Common sense reforms like the ones listed here, will both protect voters from ballot fraud and restore citizens’ confidence in the integrity of our elections.
