Politics

North Carolina voters have seen it all. There’s still cause for optimism.

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

North Carolina voters have seen it all. There’s still cause for optimism.

This article is the third in a five-part series called “Protecting the Election.” As former President Donald Trump and many of his allies refuse to concede his defeat in the 2020 election, this BLN Daily series brings election law and policy experts to explore the many threats to certifying election results at both the state and national levels.

The 2024 election will be a wholly different experience for North Carolina’s more than 5.5 million voters.

North Carolina voters — including college students and voters living in storm-affected areas — are voting early in record numbers.

After years of attacks on voting rights by the gerrymandered GOP supermajority in the state Legislature, North Carolina voters will be required to show a photo ID at the polls for the first time in a presidential election. Coupled with new restrictions on vote-by-mail and lawsuits targeting student voters, Republicans are doing everything they can to suppress the vote among core Democratic voting blocs. These human-made barriers to voting have only been exacerbated in western North Carolina by Hurricane Helene and its aftermath.

Despite these new challenges, North Carolina voters — including college students and voters living in storm-affected areas — are voting early in record numbers, and dedicated election officials across the state are doing everything they can to ensure that voting is safe and convenient.

While most North Carolina voters possess photo ID that meets the state’s new voter ID requirements, there has been some confusion among many voters about this new law. Most importantly for voters, if a voter has been unable to obtain an acceptable photo ID because of lack of transportation, lack of knowledge about the ID requirement or any other reasonable impediment, they may still vote provisionally and complete an ID exception form. While questions linger about how county boards of elections will process exception forms, voters without IDs can still confidently vote even if they lack appropriate photo identification.

A flashpoint in North Carolina’s ongoing voter ID fight is the acceptability of photo IDs from North Carolina’s colleges and universities. After rounds of lawsuits, statutory revisions and rulemaking, students and employees at North Carolina’s colleges and universities are now permitted to use their school IDs for voting, but only if the school’s ID has been pre-approved by the state board of elections. While the board of elections has approved the use of over 130 different school IDs for 2024, these approvals have not been without controversy.

In August, the board of elections approved the use of UNC-Chapel Hill’s digital student ID, the primary form of campus ID for students, which is accessible using a mobile device. The Republican National Committee and state GOP soon filed suit, arguing that, under North Carolina’s voter ID law, only physical ID cards are permitted. While a trial court judge initially ruled that the digital IDs met voter ID requirements, the state court of appeals overruled the trial courts’ decision. The higher courts’ ruling has led to a scramble by UNC-Chapel Hill administrators and student advocacy groups to ensure that students who do not have another acceptable form of voter ID are able to obtain a physical student ID card free of charge.

In the westernmost third of North Carolina, the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene has created significant hurdles to voting.

In addition to implementing voter ID, North Carolina’s Republican Legislature has also further restricted vote-by-mail options. In keeping with the new voter ID requirement, vote-by-mail voters must now submit a photocopy of their ID or a form claiming a voter ID exception along with their ballot. These additional steps make it incrementally more difficult for voters to successfully submit their mail ballot.

Another wrinkle is that previously a voter could mail a ballot by Election Day and have it counted as long as it was received at the county board elections within three days after Election Day. Now, however, mail ballots must be received by the close of voting on Election Day in order to be counted.

In the westernmost third of North Carolina, the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene has created significant hurdles to voting. Helene’s winds and floods destroyed hundreds of homes, displaced thousands and left tens of thousands more still without electricity or running water.

However, in the storm’s wake, the Republican-led Legislature, Democratic majority state board of elections and election administrators across the affected region have come together to provide voters and local election administrators the resources and flexibility to conveniently cast their ballots this fall. Because of this rapid response, 76 of the originally planned 80 early voting sites across the region opened at the start of early voting last week. Additionally, voters in the affected counties have been given the option to return vote-by-mail ballots at any board of elections office or early voting site in the state. Under an existing carveout in North Carolina’s voter ID law, voters who are unable to provide a photo ID because of the natural disaster are excused from presenting photo ID provided they complete the simple exception form.

Despite yearslong Republican voter suppression efforts and the worst natural disaster in state history, there is also cause for optimism. Early voting totals are far outpacing 2020 numbers — and the vast majority of voters across the state are voting without issue.

In the aftermath of Helene, Republicans and Democrats have come together to make sure voters across the state are able to safely and conveniently cast a ballot. Perhaps most importantly, the professional election administrators in North Carolina’s state and county board of elections are uniformly committed to ensuring that every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot and that every ballot is counted in a fair and secure process.

Seth Morris

Seth Morris is an attorney in Raleigh, North Carolina with experience in voting rights and election law.

Politics

Senate Republicans are getting smoked in fundraising

Published

34 minutes ago

October 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republican Senate candidates are hurting for cash.

Nearly every Democratic candidate in battleground Senate races outraised their GOP opponent from July through September. And in some cases, the disparities were stark.

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico trounced Republican Ken Paxton $60.2 million to $10.2 million in their main campaign accounts.
In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff raised $33.1 million to Rep. Mike Collins’ nearly $2.8 million.
In North Carolina, Democrat Roy Cooper raised $12.2 million to Michael Whatley’s $2.1 million.
In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed hauled in roughly $33 million to former Rep. Mike Rogers’ nearly $10 million.
In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson raised $20.5 million to GOP Sen. Susan Collins’ $5.2 million.
In Ohio, Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown hauled in $23.1 million to GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s $4.8 million.
In Iowa, Josh Turek raised $13.9 million to Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson’s nearly $3.3 million.
In Alaska, Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola raked in $17 million to GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan’s nearly $2.7 million.
In New Hampshire, Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas brought in $8.1 million to Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu’s $1.5 million.
And in Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton raised nearly $9.9 million to GOP Sen. Roger Marshall’s just $866,000.

Across those 10 Senate races, the Democratic campaigns raised more than five times as much as the Republican ones. Put another way: Talarico alone raised more than all those Republicans combined.

Marshall and Whatley each started October with less than $1 million left in the bank. Mike Collins wasn’t much better-positioned, entering the final weeks of the election with just over $1 million cash on hand.

These numbers do not include joint fundraising committees, which allow candidates to raise money and may have some more cash that has not yet been transferred to the campaigns.

Democrats have consistently outraised Republicans on the candidate level this cycle. But the yawning gaps heading into the midterm’s home stretch stand as the latest example of the deteriorating environment for the GOP.

And while GOP outside groups have significantly more money than Democrats, this candidate cash advantage matters because candidates get TV ads for much cheaper rates, letting their dollars stretch much farther.

To underscore how lopsided some of these figures are: At least half a dozen House Democratic challengers raised over $3 million in the third quarter — a sum higher than several GOP Senate incumbents.

There are some silver linings for the GOP.

In Minnesota, Republican Michele Tafoya raised $4.9 million to Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s $4.3 million. Tafoya started the month with $2.1 million to Flanagan’s $1.5 million.

Sullivan, Husted, Hinson, Rogers and Susan Collins all entered October with millions more in cash on hand than their Democratic opponents.

And Republicans are getting air cover from GOP super PACs bankrolled by billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. that have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms in recent weeks.

Musk was revealed on Thursday as the primary funder of Texas PAC, which has spent $131 million so far boosting Paxton and attacking Talarico. Musk gave $158 million to Senate Republicans’ super PAC arm last quarter, the filings showed, with the group in turn transferring the funds to the pro-Paxton PAC.

Republicans are also benefitting from a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows party committees to spend unlimited sums in coordination with candidates, allowing the National Republican Senatorial Committee to offset at least some of the differences.

Since the tranche of reports filed Thursday only cover until Sept. 30, the full scope of each candidates’ coffers is unknown.

But there are other signs that some are strapped for cash in the final sprint: Whatley has gone dark on television, a clear indication of him running low on funds even as his campaign insists it’s a temporary pause.

Politics

Inside the democratic socialists’ plan to shake up Congress

Published

1 hour ago

October 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Inside the democratic socialists’ plan to shake up Congress

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Politics

Trump lashes out at Republicans as Ken Paxton struggles in Texas

Published

7 hours ago

October 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump is blaming fellow Republicans as his endorsed candidate, Ken Paxton, appears to be in a fierce struggle for a Senate seat in Texas with Democratic challenger James Talarico in a state the GOP has long taken for granted.

Trump, in a lengthy post to Truth Social Thursday, singled out longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove and Sen. John Cornyn, the incumbent who failed to secure the president’s endorsement in a heated primary.

Rove and Cornyn, Trump said, are doing “everything possible” to make it harder for Paxton to defeat Talarico, a state lawmaker and Presbyterian seminarian who is making a suprisingly strong run for Senate in deep red Texas.

“They are hurting Texas and, more importantly, hurting the United States of America!” Trump wrote. “If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career.”

Cornyn, a longtime fixture in Texas politics, lost his bid for reelection in a contentious Republican primary in which he and his supporters portrayed Paxton as a deeply flawed candidate. As Election Day approaches, public polling over the past two months has shown Talarico with a narrow edge against Paxton, the state’s attorney general.

Trump urged his supporters to back Paxton.

“Your favorite President (ME!) is asking all of those who supported Senator John Cornyn to UNITE, and immediately switch your support to Ken Paxton,” Trump said. “He will be a Great Senator, just like he is a Great Attorney General. “

The race has also become one of the most expensive non-presidential battles. Talarico raised $64 million this summer — the largest third-quarter haul of any Senate candidate in history. He has raised more than $134 million since launching his campaign last year.

Paxton raised $18 million in the third quarter of 2026 and last month announced a new $20 million ad buy. Earlier this month, though, a Trump operative told POLITICO that MAGA Inc. and its affiliates are could spend nearly $45 million on direct mail, TV and digital advertising in Texas through Oct. 12.

Already, $235 million has been spent by outside conservative groups and party committees against Talarico as national Republicans scramble to boost Paxton.

Some Republicans have grown concerned that the cost of the Texas race is diverting money needed in other states and have expressed frustrations with Paxton after leaked audio showed him blaming Trump for his woes.

Trump easily won Texas in 2024, winning just over 56% of the vote. But concerns about Republicans’ chances this November have surged as the president’s approval rating plummets.