EDITORIAL: How to rig an election in NC

Current North Carolina elections laws do protect the integrity of our elections… somewhat. But there are still numerous ways to affect the outcome of the vote.

Voter disenfranchisement is a big one — simply removing folks from the rolls, or making it more difficult to cast a vote by implementing extra steps like voter ID, or flooding polling places with “election observers” who can do things like challenge voters with “Hispanic sounding” names as “suspicious.” 

It should be noted that there is no real threat of noncitizens voting in NC elections — this year’s ballot referendum notwithstanding — and it is already illegal by NC law. 

Gerrymandering, too, is a way to rig an election by allowing candidates to choose their voters instead of the other way around. But statewide races, like this year’s presidential election, cannot be gerrymandered. That’s what the Electoral College is for.

But as the Protect Democracy organization has outlined, there is another type of plan afoot in NC that could throw the state’s electors to former President Donald Trump, and it’s scarier than anything Halloween can throw at us.

The NC GOP, along with the Republican National Committee and other allies, have already filed at least seven “zombie lawsuits” that cast doubts on the veracity of the election results that haven’t even been tallied yet. They use the disaster in western NC after Hurricane Helene to suggest that voters there will be disenfranchised, raise the specter of noncitizens voting and issue nonsensical warnings about absentee ballots from military and other overseas voters.

One loophole in NC election laws is that there is no official deadline to resolve protests and recounts, meaning that we could miss the federal Dec. 11 deadline to assign our 16 electoral votes. If that happens, the GOP-majority NC Legislature could attempt to decide themselves who the state goes to by creating a slate of alternate electors, citing what’s known as the “independent state legislature” theory. This would only happen if Vice President Kamala Harris wins NC, which… who knows? And it would cause a national outcry in a close race like this one, more bad press for our state.

There is also a possibility that the state legislature could decide council of state and other state-level elections independent of the will of the voters by claiming election fraud and irregularities in the process, already laid out by the zombie lawsuits.

These conspiracy theories are emboldening a new generation of homegrown terrorists, who US intelligence agencies warn may have plans to subvert the election results themselves through physical violence at polling places and campaign events.

It’s like the Jan. 6 playbook, amped up and spread throughout the country. This time, we just have a bit more advance notice of what may happen after the election. And, unlike the 2020 election, NC may play a pivotal role.