A bill unveiled late Wednesday calls for ending early voting periods on the Friday before Election Day, eliminating the popular half-day of early voting on that Saturday.
Under the proposal, which received preliminary House approval Thursday afternoon 67-36, voting this fall would start on Wednesday, Oct. 17, and end on Friday, Nov. 2. Early voting sites would be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. each weekday during that period, and counties could set their own hours for any weekend voting.
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But House Rules Chairman David Lewis, R-Harnett, the sponsor of the bill, said all sites in each county would have to be open at the same time.
"When an early site is open, they are all open," Lewis said.
Many counties have traditionally had only a handful of sites open for the first week of early voting before expanding in the final week, and some observers said counties would likely provide fewer early voting sites because they don't have the financial or human resources to man sites 12 hours a day throughout the 17-day early voting period.
"Resources are finite," Greg Flynn, chairman of the Wake County Board of Elections, told lawmakers during a Thursday morning committee meeting. "We have good attendance at the start of early voting and at the end of early voting, but requiring a 12-hour day during the middle of that 17-day period is not an efficient use of resources."
Lewis said he wants to give as many people as possible a chance to vote, and having sites open before and after people are at work would accomplish that.
Isela Gutierrez, research and policy director for Democracy North Carolina, said requiring sites to be open 60 hours during the week will discourage counties from offering any weekend hours.
"Overall, I'm afraid the impact will be to reduce options for voters," Gutierrez said. "Voters appreciate the flexibility of early voting. They appreciate the options they have."
Republican lawmakers slashed early voting to 10 days in the 2013 voter ID law, but like voter ID, that provision was later thrown out in court. Two years ago, early voting was calculated on maintaining the same number of hours for early voting as before the 2013 law, giving county boards the flexibility to determine what days and what hours sites were open.
"I believe this provides a more uniform way. It provides more access, more consistent access to the polls," Lewis said.
According to statistics from the State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement, about 9.4 percent of all early voters (103,345 of 1.1 million) cast votes on the final Saturday during the last midterm election in 2014. In 2016, about 6.5 percent of early votes (192,963 of nearly 3 million) were cast on that Saturday.
In both elections, the days preceding that half-day of early voting saw much higher vote totals – from 12 to 14 percent of overall turnout in 2014 and from 7 to 10 percent in 2016.
Lewis said dropping that final Saturday, which often extends past the 1 p.m. end because people are still in line, would give county elections officials more time to prepare for Election Day three days later.
Rep. Andy Dulin, R-Mecklenburg, said the new schedule makes Oct. 27 the last Saturday in the early voting period this fall, and he suggested people who cannot make it to the polls during the week could easily vote then.
"Everybody's vote counts the same, whether you vote on the 17th of October or the 27th of October," Dulin said. "I would encourage people to come out and exercise their right to vote anytime they want between 7 [a.m.] and 7 [p.m.] for 17 days."
State board seeks notice, input
As the House Rules Committee debated the bill, members of the State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement held a conference call to bemoan the fact that neither they nor the elections board's staff had been consulted about the proposal.
Lewis acknowledged in the meeting that he hadn't contacted the board about the proposal and didn't know if they had any problems with it.
Chairman Andy Penry said that, while the board doesn't write the laws, it must enforce them, and the staff's expertise could help lawmakers determine what's feasible and what's not administratively and logistically. He asked that the board be given 24 hours' advance notice of pending elections bills in the future.
Board member Stella Anderson said 24 hours doesn't give staff enough time to collect data for lawmakers, but Josh Lawson, general counsel for the board, said lawmakers aren't obligated to ask for any information.
"This board is best positioned of anybody in the state of North Carolina to give the General Assembly candid, honest, straightforward feedback," board member Josh Malcolm said, adding that board members may also want to ask that lawmakers seek input from them on the practical impact of the bill.
That drew a blistering response from board member John Lewis, who said board members were overstepping their authority.
"We're injecting ourselves into a political discussion," Lewis said. "We're damaging our ability to function in a nonpartisan manner."
He added that the pending legislation doesn't qualify as an "emergency" requiring a meeting, so the board likely had no authority to take any action.
Eventually, Lawson drafted a letter from the board requesting 24 hours' notice. The board voted 5-2 to send the letter to legislative leaders, with unaffiliated member Damon Circosta joining Democrats Penry, Malcolm, Anderson and Valerie Johnson in favor of it. Lewis and fellow Republican Stacy "Four" Eggers opposed the move.