Politics
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.
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.
Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said he thinks Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans are wrong to move away from the party’s traditional embrace of free-market economics — and that their shift could create an opening for a “pro-freedom” movement.
“I think they are in error,” Daniels said in an interview when asked about Vance’s criticism of economist Milton Friedman, who championed free-market capitalism.
“I think what Vance is saying is that there are aspects to the free market which can be disruptive of culture and tradition. I mean, that’s what the free market does. It’s dynamic,” he told Blue Light News. “It’s the only mechanism, in my view, for preserving the American dream, and that’s the most important element of our culture.”
The vice president’s intra-party critics have argued that Vance has been moving away from free-market economics and toward a larger role for the government in shaping the economy in his defense of the Trump administration’s economic policies, especially its wide-ranging tariffs.
“What the president is doing is changing 40 years of a failed bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C., that has sold out American workers and destroyed the underlying economic strength of the United States of America,” Vance said in a Fox News interview last year.
The move is seen by some as Vance testing a more populist and protectionist message as he eyes the Republican presidential nomination in 2028.
But the two men were at one point closer politically. In Vance’s bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance described Daniels as his “political hero.” Daniels has said that Vance sought his counsel on running for office in 2018 and Daniels advised against it because it was likely to be a bad year for Republicans.
The vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Daniels’ remarks.
Daniels recently released his new book, “Impatience Is a Virtue.” In it, the veteran of Indiana politics — who also led the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush — detailed his career championing the free market.
Daniels told Blue Light News that President Donald Trump was both a “symptom” and “a propellant” of voters’ discontent, pointing to their “feeling of being patronized, condescended, looked down on, ignored, disrespected.” And Trump’s political success came from his ability to unite and represent these discontented voters.
Still, Daniels argued the evolution of the Republican Party under Trump has created room for a “pro-freedom party” that champions economic freedom and individual autonomy.
“Whether that is the next iteration of this Republican Party or you find some other vehicle, I don’t know,” he said. “But I think that there’s a need, and as I say, there’s certainly, I think, a market for that viewpoint waiting to be expressed by somebody.”
The former governor, now back at Purdue University as the interim president after leading the school for a decade until 2022, sidestepped a question about his party identification and another one on whether he sees Vance emerging as the “pro-freedom” candidate.
“It’s all TBD; I don’t know,” he said of Vance.
Daniels also defended his view on another 2028 hopeful, Democrat Pete Buttigieg, who was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, during the tail end of Daniels’ governorship.
In his book, Daniels said Buttigieg is smart, but his principal asset that excites Democratic activists is his sexual identity.
Buttigieg became the first openly gay person confirmed to be a Cabinet secretary when he was tapped to lead then-President Joe Biden’s Transportation Department. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This differentiates him in a way that would be appealing to large portions of the core Democratic electorate,” he said. “Absent that, he would be a less likely national figure.”
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Two women this week sued former GOP Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and two others — including a former state legislator — in federal court and accused the men of engaging in an alleged sex trafficking scheme during a time when Gaetz was still in Congress.
The lawsuit, which seeks damages from Gaetz and other defendants, was filed in Orlando by two women who were in their early 20s when they first met Gaetz. The women are not named in the lawsuit. The details mirror allegations that were at the center of a House Ethics Committee probe that found Gaetz had sex with a minor, solicited prostitutes and used illegal drugs.
“The defendants collectively used their public office, power, and wealth to prey on the economic vulnerability of the plaintiffs to commit the acts outlined below,” states the 38-page lawsuit.
That House probe helped derail Gaetz’s bid to become attorney general under President Donald Trump. He resigned from his Northwest Florida congressional seat to seek the post but decided to withdraw his name ahead of a potentially messy confirmation battle in the Senate.
Gaetz, who has repeatedly denied he ever had sex with a minor, said he would vigorously contest the allegations in the lawsuit.
“I look forward to taking the plaintiffs’ depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” Gaetz said in a text message. “The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional committee report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”
The civil suit is the latest development in the long-running scandal involving Gaetz, a former ally of Trump who has continuously denied any involvement in underage sex or trafficking of women after news broke in 2021 that the Justice Department was investigating him.
The lawsuit this week by Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 was first reported by the Miami Herald. It alleges that Gaetz and former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg “coordinated the recruitment, payments, drugs and travel to obtain commercial sex acts from young women.” The lawsuit includes former Florida legislator and lobbyist Chris Dorworth because his Central Florida home was the site of a party where he allegedly “participated in the activities alleged there.”
Greenberg is serving an 11-year federal sentence after he pleaded guilty to multiple federal offenses including underage sex trafficking of a minor and wire fraud. Greenberg cooperated with federal investigators who were probing Gaetz but the U.S. Department of Justice closed the investigation without filing charges.
The lawsuit says it “arises from the recruitment and sexual exploitation” that occurred from 2017 through January 2019 and included trips to various locations such as Las Vegas, New York City and the Bahamas. It accuses Gaetz and Greenberg of making promises to help the two women financially or with college bills.
“They led her to believe they would resolve her financial needs as long as she continued to perform sexual acts for them and their associates,” the lawsuit states about Jane Doe 1. “They used the age, wealth and political power gap between themselves and Jane Doe 1 to keep her compliant and silent.”
Jane Doe 2, the lawsuit states, was “paid less” than promised and “through this pattern defendants caused Jane Doe 2 to believe she would lose her education and serious financial harm if she stopped performing sexual acts.”
Stencer Kuvin, a West Palm Beach attorney representing the two women, said in an email that federal law designed to protect sex trafficking victims has a 10-year statute of limitations “which potentially could run [out] next year based upon the allegations in the complaint.”
Gaetz, a firebrand and ally of Trump, was once seen as a potential candidate for Florida governor or attorney general. Since he left Congress, he has hosted his own show on the One America News Network and he was appointed to the board of a nonprofit charged with distributing proceeds from a settlement Florida received after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill along the Gulf Coast.
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