Sep. 7, 2005
Legislature Wraps Up Landmark Session
By J. Barlow Herget
RALEIGH - The reviews are in, and the General Assembly can take a bow for its work on election and lobbying laws.
“Unprecedented,” says Chris Heagarty, executive director of the N.C. Center for Voter Education whose group monitors election and campaign finance issues.
“Taken together, this is one of the most significant packages of election laws I've seen,” mused Ran Coble, a veteran watcher of the legislature and executive director of the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research.
“There were significant and important changes in election law this session,” comments Don Wright, general counsel for the State Board of Elections and one of the people who must implement some of the new laws.
For one of the stagehands, Rep. Deb Ross, D-Wake, it was “a session of heavy lifting.”
Legislators settled the race for state School Superintendent. It followed the procedure set forth in a new state law and voted for Democrat June Atkinson over Republican Bill Fletcher. (Atkinson, a former teacher and education administrator, led in the final vote count by about 8,500 votes before the contest became entangled in the courts.)
“They established a process and then used the process,” says Coble. It was a historic last act for the session.
The embarrassments that flowed out of the 2004 election prompted several new laws. One major election reform, Senate Bill 223, is an example.
Nicknamed the “paper trail” law, it will eliminate the cause of last year's problems when a Carteret County electronic voting machine failed to record about 4,500 votes.
The new measure requires “voter verifiable paper ballots for all voting machines, so voters can confirm their choices and machines have paper back-ups,” according to Bob Hall of the non-partisan Democracy North Carolina.
Hall notes that the law also complements the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by making machines accessible to disabled citizens and requiring machines to alert voters who “over-vote” if they pick too many candidates.
The law mandates audits, too, for a certain percentage of ballots cast to assure machine counts are accurate.
Another important law clears up confusing statutes about provisional balloting. The state Supreme Court, in a suit argued by Fletcher, threw out 11,000 ballots that had been cast on Election Day by registered voters who voted outside their respective precincts.
The legislature and the State Board of Elections believed such votes were valid, and to correct the Court's reading of the law, the General Assembly restated their intent in forthright language.
Ross directed the adoption of House Bill 1115, the omnibus election legislation that addressed a number of issues such as allowing voters to have assistance in the voting booth and stating that you vote in the county where your bedroom sits. (Note to husbands who have to sleep on the couch: If the couch is in a different county, that's where you will vote!)
Most importantly, HB 1115 permits local election boards to allow known voters to recast their ballots if those ballots are lost. This is a way to correct another Carteret County-type mishap. Current law suggested that such a revote would have to be statewide.
The session also fixed the dates on which the popular State Judicial Voter Guide is published, allowing time for distribution to early voters.
The legislature finally adopted a meaningful change in the state's porous lobby regulations. Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, says, “It was the best bill passed in this cycle.” He concedes, “It's not a solution to all the problems that are down here.” But he believes “it will be a big part of solving the problems.”
The main provision of the bill is to require lobbyists to record all their spending on legislators and members of the executive branch. Previously, lobbyists did not have to make public those expenses that were considered “goodwill” spending. And “goodwill” was broadly defined as those entertainments and events at which no specific bills were discussed.
The bill also requires a “cooling off period” for legislators and government executives who want to quit and become lobbyists. That means they have to sit out for a while and not jump right back into the process the next day, lobbying their former colleagues and employees. It also requires lobbyists to report their spending more frequently - monthly - during legislative sessions.
A little-noticed provision by Sen. Tony Rand, D-Cumberland, was adopted in the Budget Bill. To support the production of state voter guides and the state's nonpartisan election of judges, it turns a rarely-used $50 “voluntary contribution” from attorneys into a mandatory, added fee for state law licenses. It will add an estimated $1 million to the state Public Campaign Fund.
Other election legislation died or was held over until the short session next May. These bills included same-day registration and a voter-owned system of public financing for most Council of State offices. They will provide drama for another day.
As for this session, applause is in order.
Barlow Herget is a former Raleigh city councilman and writes the Follow the Money column for the N.C. Center for Voter Education.
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