NORTH CAROLINA — The two Republican members on the North Carolina Board of Elections resigned abruptly after they say they were misled by an agreement on a lawsuit over absentee voting.
But board chair Damon Circosta disagreed. "They knew full well what was going on," he said in an interview with Spectrum News 1.
David Black and Ken Raymond both said they were unaware of all details regarding Attorney General Josh Stein's proposal that could change absentee voting rules for the upcoming election. They say they weren't clear on some of the information before they agreed to the settlement addressing mail-in voting concerns.
The resignations mean there are no Republicans on the Board of Elections just 40 days out from the Nov. 3 General Election.
North Carolina has become a battleground state in the 2020 presidential election, with President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden in a tight contest for the state.
Tim Wigginton, spokeman for the state GOP, told Spectrum News 1 that the party is preparing nominations now to fill the vacancies and will submit them "as quickly as possible."
The state party will submit a list of nominations to Gov. Roy Cooper for each vacant seat, who will then make his choice off those lists and appoint the two new Republican board members.
The board issued a statement about the resignations saying all members received memos laying out the contents of the agreement and legal staff was available to answer any questions.
The agreement, which still needs a judge's approval, gives new guidelines for what happens when a witness doesn't complete all the required information on an absentee ballot. That is the most common reason boards deem ballots incomplete and uncountable, according to the board.
The settlement would also extend the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received by county boards of election to Nov. 12. Ballots must still be postmarked by Election Day.
The new rules say a voter can submit an affidavit if they did not sign their ballot or signed in the wrong place, or if their witness did not fill in the mail-in ballot correctly. Before this agreement, voters would have had to complete a new ballot.
“Many of the new rules for the elections this year have been brought about by lawsuits filed against the NCBOE and the opinion from the N.C. Attorney General’s Office that the likelihood of prevailing in court would be slim,” Black said in his resignation letter.
"It is impossible to have true bipartisanship when both sides of the political aisle do not have the important and vital information needed to make the right decisions," Raymond said in his resignation letter.
"In their resignation letters, Mr. Black and Mr. Raymond made various claims that they were not fully briefed before their decision to join unanimously in seeking settlement of some of the many outstanding legal cases the agency faces in light of the global pandemic," Circosta said in a statement.
"These claims are not true. In a nearly three-hour meeting, and in extensive briefings prior to the meeting, all board members were provided with the merits - both pro and con - of settling these lawsuits," he said.
In a separate interview, Circosta said it was important to settle the lawsuit as the election gets closer by the day. "One of the things that's a challenge is when you have litigation out there looming," he said.
The board decided to settle the suit to avoid confusing voters right before Election Day, Cicosta said. "Voters deserve certainty."
In a statement, the North Carolina GOP said, "Cooper, Stein and the election board are attempting to rewrite North Carolina election law. This unconstitutional attempt to go around the democratic process seeks to expand the statutory absentee ballot deadline, subverts the witness requirements approved in the Bipartisan Elections Act of 2020, rewrites the definition of postmark and weakens protections against ballot harvesting."
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, the Republican candidate for governor, asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the board, alledging the settlement amounts to election interference.
"The fact that an executive agency would dare enter into an agreement that attempts to make substantial changes to our election law less than six weeks before the election raises serious concerns about the motives of all involved. It also raises serious legal concerns," Forest wrote Thursday in a letter to Attorney General William Barr.
“These resignations raise serious questions about the integrity of the Cooper-controlled State Board of Elections, Josh Stein’s Department of Justice, and the circumstances of how this collusive settlement was put forward," North Carolina House Speaker Moore said in a statement.
"Deceiving the minority Republican members of the board is completely unacceptable and damages faith in our electoral institutions. We are continuing to explore all of our legal options.”
Among North Carolina’s 7,153,476 registered voters, more than a million people have requested absentee ballots this year.