North Carolina elections board lowered bar for rejecting provisional ballots over photo ID
The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines on July 16, 2026, to adopt a rule making it easier to reject provisional ballots cast by voters who lack a photo ID. The new rule lets a simple majority of a county board's members disqualify such a ballot, replacing a prior requirement that all five members agree. Board Democrats warned the change helps legitimize unsubstantiated fraud claims, while the state elections director said it merely aligns the rule with existing law.
Actors
On July 16, 2026, North Carolina's State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines to adopt a rule making it easier for county election officials to reject a voter's provisional ballot over a lack of photo identification. Under the previous rule, all five members of a county board had to unanimously agree that a voter was lying about their reason for lacking ID before disqualifying the ballot; the new rule lowers that bar to a simple majority.
The board's three Republican members supported the change; its two Democratic members opposed it. Democratic board member Jeff Carmon said the rule change helps legitimize unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, saying the board was "supporting a lie." State Elections Director Sam Hayes, who took over election administration after Republican state lawmakers stripped that authority from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, said the rule brings the board's practice in line with state law and does not expect it to increase the number of rejected ballots. The rule still requires approval from the state's Rules Review Commission, which also has a Republican majority, before taking effect.
Why we recorded this
Free and fair elections depend on ballots being rejected only under narrow, consistently applied rules. North Carolina's State Board of Elections voted along party lines to let a simple majority, rather than unanimous agreement among a county board's five members, disqualify a provisional ballot over a voter's stated reason for lacking photo ID. Lowering that threshold makes it easier for a partisan county board majority to discard ballots without cross-partisan agreement, expanding administrators' discretion to reject votes.
Sources
- NC elections board moves to make it easier to toss voters' ballots — NC Newsline investigative accessed July 17, 2026
- 'We're supporting a lie': NC elections board votes to throw out ballots more easily — WRAL investigative accessed July 17, 2026
See also
- North Carolina elections board voted along party lines to make it easier to throw out mail-in ballots
- North Carolina elections board voted along party lines to reject most Sunday early-voting hours across 20 counties
- North Carolina elections board voted along party lines to expand mail-ballot rejection grounds hours before ballots were mailed
- FBI expands Ohio Organizing Collaborative probe to affiliated national elections network
- DHS conditioned over $1 billion in homeland-security grants on states adopting hand-marked ballots and SAVE voter-roll checks
Receive the daily digest by email
One email each morning with every entry filed the day before. Free. No tracking, no ads. Unsubscribe anytime.