ICYMI: Senate Elections Chairs Pen N&O Op-Ed on Election Integrity

“North Carolina was the first in the country to start voting. We don’t need to be the last to finish counting.”

“And most controversially of all, the board secretly negotiated with Democratic Party super-lawyer Marc Elias to ‘settle’ a lawsuit to rewrite the rules of the election after voting began” — and excluded one key defendant, the Legislature, in doing so

Raleigh, N.C. — Sens. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell), Warren Daniel (R-Burke), and Paul Newton (R-Cabarrus), who co-chair the Senate Elections Committee, penned an op-ed in today’s Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer. Excerpts are below. Read the full op-ed here.

North Carolina was the first in the country to start voting. We don’t need to be the last to finish counting.

After a 9-day wait, North Carolina was called for President Trump, yet the suspicion of the electoral process harbored by the regular person on the street is palpable — and deeply unhealthy.

Cultural elites, who rarely escape their urban bubbles, write off the sign-waving protesters as ignorant followers of a president whose days are mercifully numbered.

Such condescension is part of the reason Democrats failed so miserably this election cycle, but it also misses a key reality: The protesters have good reason for their distrust.

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And most controversially of all, the board secretly negotiated with Democratic Party super-lawyer Marc Elias to “settle” a lawsuit to rewrite the rules of the election after voting began.

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Add to this suspicion the information vacuum that has caused North Carolina to be one of the last states with called election results and we have a situation ripe for the types of protests we’re seeing.

When the legislature returns to session, we intend to get to work on fixing this problem. We’ll start with an eye toward improving our process so that election winners can be determined as near to Election Day as possible…And we’ll also take action to ensure the rules of the game can’t be changed after voting is already underway.