Senate Bill 747 is Anti-Voter

Our democracy is supposed to be based on freedom, fairness, and choice. But here in North Carolina, extremists who want control over our elections are pushing for legislation limiting our freedom to vote and diminishing our voices. We should make election policy based on what’s best for North Carolina voters, not the special interests peddling lies about our elections.

• SB 747 sharply reduces access to Absentee Mail-in Voting. Most significantly, the bill eliminates the 3-day grace period for mail-in ballots, which protects voters whose ballots are delayed by weather or other mail delays. Attacks on mail-in ballots are attacks on those who rely most on absentee voting: people with disabilities, the elderly, and rural voters. 

• SB 747 guts popular Same-Day Registration, potentially impacting the election experiences of hundreds of thousands of North Carolina voters, jeopardizing thousands of votes, delaying election results, and further burdening election officials. 

• SB 747 exposes voters and election volunteers to harassment and criminal charges. This legislation could potentially criminalize the behavior of those doing voter registration and increase harassment of those assisting voters with disabilities.

• SB 747 opens the door for mass challenges to ballots by fraud conspiracy theorists, a long-standing goal of the anti-voter extremists who helped shape this bill. Since 2016, these Big Lie fanatics have upended the lives of everyday voters by baselessly accusing them of fraud, including a specific incident involving Black voters in Brunswick County. Many provisions of SB 747 are taken directly from the legislative playbook of the state’s most extreme election deniers.

• SB 747 attempts to impose discriminatory and unreliable signature matching for mail-in ballots. Software-based signature matching is filled with discrepancies, including biases against communities of color, people with disabilities, and elderly North Carolinians. Combined with the existing requirement for two witness signatures, this makes North Carolina’s mail-in ballot verification the most burdensome in the country.

In sum, the proposed changes impose new barriers on older voters, college students, disabled voters, rural voters, and reinforce discrimination against communities of color across the state.

Extremists in North Carolina want control over our elections and are pushing for legislation, like SB 747, that would limit our freedom to vote and diminish our voices.