President Joe Biden will be only Democrat on NC primary ballot, state officials decide

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Even though there are other Democratic candidates running in the presidential race, President Joe Biden will be the only Democrat on the ballot in North Carolina’s March 5 primary, state election officials decided Tuesday.

In a unanimous decision, the NC State Board of Elections declined to add any additional candidates. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), author Marianne Williamson and political commentator Cenk Uygur are challenging Biden.

The NC Democratic Party only submitted Biden’s name for the state board to include on the ballot, which the board initially approved in December.

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“To get on the ballot, you need to have donors in the state and be actively campaigning in the state. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson haven’t been here this cycle. This is the standard that we have used in all previous cycles,” wrote NCDP spokesperson Tommy Mattocks in an email.

State board members, which include Democrats and Republicans, all resisted the idea of overriding decisions by party leaders on which candidates to place on the ballot for their respective primaries.

“These are party primaries. And, the party should have the right, I think, to nominate the candidates of its choosing,” said Kevin Lewis, a Republican appointee to the board.

A spokesperson for Marianne Williamson described the situation as a “crisis of democracy.” Williamson was included on the ballot in North Carolina when she ran in the 2020 Democratic primary.

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“We are disappointed that the North Carolina Board of Elections abdicated their authority to protect North Carolina voters from the North Carolina Democratic State Party attempts to circumvent democracy,” wrote Sydney Goldstein in an email. “It is not the job of the State Board of Elections to protect incumbents. It is their job to oversee elections in a non-partisan manner.”

Last month, the state board declined to take up a challenge to former President Donald Trump appearing on the Republican primary ballot.

Brian Martin, who lives in Stokes County, sought Trump’s removal citing the insurrection clause of the 14^th Amendment. Martin has asked for a judge in Wake County Superior Court to weigh in on whether the board has the authority to take up such a challenge.

Signature verification

The state board also randomly chose ten counties to take part in a pilot program during the March primary to use software to try to verify voters’ signatures on mail-in ballots.

Those counties are: Durham, Rowan, Montgomery, Halifax, Pamlico, Cherokee, Bertie, Wilkes, Jones and Henderson.

In selecting the counties, a new state law called for “diversity of population size, regional location and demographic composition.”

Board member Kevin Lewis questioned the use of racial data to meet the demographic composition requirement.

“I’m just a little bit alarmed that we’ve jumped right straight to classifying voters by race to make this 10-county selection,” he said.

Siobhan Millen, a Democratic appointee to the board, said having that information could help the state if there are eventually any lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

“If there’s a problem that is racially based, it seems like it would behoove us to have a forewarning of that,” she said.

NCSBE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said no counties had come forward seeking to be part of the pilot program.

“They recognize that this just adds to their workload in a very busy timeframe. So, we have not had any volunteers,” she said.

No ballots will be rejected during the primary due to signature verification issues.

Brinson Bell said the software can be used to flag ballots where there may be an issue verifying a signature. It would then be up to county election officials to manually inspect those ballots to try to make a determination.

“Given that it’s a pilot, we’re gonna work with the software, see how accurate it is,” Brinson Bell said.

Republican lawmakers included the pilot program as part of a larger new law that makes a variety of election reforms.

Signature verification is used by 27 other states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

However, some Democrats questioned the need for this change given that North Carolina already requires two witnesses or a notary public on mail-in ballots and has a photo ID requirement.

If lawmakers choose to move forward with using the program statewide for the fall general election, they will still have to establish a process for notifying voters if there’s an issue with their ballot and to be able to “cure” those issues.

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