Senators to Board of Elections: For the Sake of Election Integrity, Just Keep the Original Rules and Stop This Chaos

Multiple judges in multiple courts in multiple jurisdictions have blocked Board of Elections’ 11th-hour rule changes

Senators again ask Board to just keep rules as they existed before voting started

Head of NAACP on the chaos: “I fault the state board. People are losing confidence. People are losing trust in the election cycle.”

Raleigh, N.C. — Sens. Warren Daniel (R-Burke), Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell), and Paul Newton (R-Cabarrus), who co-chair the N.C. Senate Elections Committee, have a simple message for Gov. Cooper’s Board of Elections: “For the sake of election integrity, just keep the election rules as they existed before voting started and stop this chaos.”

As of this morning, multiple judges from three courts in three different jurisdictions have blocked tenets of the Board of Elections’ secretive settlement agreement with Marc Elias that changed election laws after voting already started.

Even one of the Democratic Party’s own appointees to the Guilford County Board of Elections, Rev. T. Anthony Spears, who also leads the N.C. NAACP, told national media that he blames the State Board of Elections for the chaos. He told CNN: “I fault the state board. People are losing confidence. People are losing trust in the election cycle.”

None of this chaos would have happened if Attorney General Josh Stein and Gov. Cooper’s Board of Elections hadn’t secretly negotiated a settlement agreement and changed state election laws after voting already began. Attorney General Stein still refuses to comply with state law and turn over public documents surrounding the secret talks.

The chaos can stop right now if the Board of Elections simply drops its effort to change the rules. Bipartisan supermajorities in the legislature agreed on those rules months before the election.