On this dormant thread, how the following story affects your opinion of North Carolina is up to you:
Last week, there was a major development in a high-profile political controversy that has roiled North Carolina for the better part of a decade. And unless you are a state political news junkie, chances are you heard nothing about it.
There were no press conferences, no major statements given by prominent leaders. The news, though incredibly significant, was almost immediately forgotten in the breathless 24-hour news cycle.
I’m talking, of course, about voter fraud—or more accurately, the lack of it in North Carolina.
Federal prosecutors announced the end of a four-year investigation into longstanding Republican claims of voter fraud in North Carolina the other week. Their findings were significant—but not in the way they intended. After years of searching, including “dragnet-style” subpoenas of at least 44 counties and multiple state agencies, sophisticated data mining, invasive audits of state voter rolls, hundreds of hours of professional staff time and more, investigators were able to find almost no evidence of voter fraud at all.
To be precise, out of about 5 million votes cast and 7 million registered voters, investigators were able to charge a grand total of 41 people with some form of fraud.
In virtually all cases, they appeared to be simple human error: regular people, including legally documented residents with green cards, who simply did not know they were ineligible to vote. Despite their best efforts, investigators were completely unable to substantiate claims of “pervasive” or “systemic” fraud. North Carolina’s elections system worked almost perfectly in keeping ineligible voters from casting ballots. [Bill Reeves, Cardinal & Pine]
The North Carolina GOP can always blame the investigators, though.
Right?
The investigation was carried out almost exclusively by Republicans themselves. Former President Trump’s own appointed US attorneys in our state were its leaders. They were assisted during most of the investigation by Republican appointees at the State Board of Elections, including its director and general counsel. Yet despite all the years of claims about an epidemic of voter fraud, investigators were able to find essentially no evidence of it.
While Reeves goes on to declaim about the utter waste of money this turned out to be, I’m not so sure I agree. For me, this is reassurance for the North Carolina Democrats that the returns they’re seeing at elections are, in fact, the truth. That, in turn, lets them fine tune their message delivery systems – and their message.
And the next time a North Carolina GOPer opens their mouth to whine about voting fraud, they can be asked just how many more times the election process must be investigated before they’ll accept that they’re just not that popular anymore.
