North Carolina Forward Party Responds to HB 958
Where We Stand—Supporting Secure, Transparent Elections and Rejecting Barriers to Competition and Voter Choice
North Carolina House Bill (HB) 958, introduced back on April 10, 2025, by Representatives Hugh Blackwell and Sarah Stevens, proposed sweeping changes to North Carolina election law, including significant changes to election administration and security requirements, voting procedures, and campaign finance rules, as well as a prohibition on the use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in state primary and general elections.
The North Carolina Forward Party (NCFP) believes election laws should accomplish several goals at the same time: protect the integrity of the vote, ensure every lawful ballot is counted, strengthen public confidence, promote transparency, expand political competition, and give voters more—not fewer—meaningful choices.
HB 958 contains a number of provisions that move North Carolina in a constructive direction. It also includes several major policy changes that would restrict electoral innovation, make ballot access more difficult, strengthen the power of established political parties, and create new risks for eligible voters.
Because these provisions have been combined into one sweeping omnibus bill, the NCFP cannot support HB 958 as written.
Where We Agree
NCFP supports several provisions intended to improve election administration, transparency, accuracy, and public confidence.
Transparent and observable ballot counting
HB 958 strengthens public access to the counting process and provides for participation or supervision by election officials representing multiple political parties. Members of the public should be able to observe election administration without interfering with election workers or the orderly counting of ballots.
Transparency is one of the best tools available for strengthening confidence in election results.
Meaningful paper-ballot audits
The bill provides for hand-to-eye audits of paper ballots and requires statistically significant sampling. It also recognizes that, where a material discrepancy exists, the paper ballot should generally control over an electronic or mechanical count.
North Carolina should maintain voter-verifiable paper records and use transparent, statistically sound audits to confirm that voting systems functioned properly.
More time for voters to correct legitimate problems
Several provisions extend important deadlines from the third to the fifth business day following an election. These include deadlines related to provisional ballots, identification, incomplete registration information, and curable absentee-ballot deficiencies.
These extensions are sensible. Election integrity does not require rejecting an otherwise lawful vote because a voter needs a reasonable amount of time to correct an administrative defect.
Improved training and emergency staffing
The bill strengthens training requirements for precinct officials and requires counties to maintain a minimum number of trained emergency election-day assistants.
Well-trained election officials are essential to election security and voter access. Many election problems arise not from fraud, but from inadequate staffing, inconsistent training, confusing procedures, or ordinary human error.
Expanded observer rights
The bill allows unaffiliated and nonpartisan candidates to appoint observers in certain elections. This is a positive recognition that election oversight should not be reserved exclusively for the two major parties.
New parties, unaffiliated candidates, and nonpartisan candidates should receive equal treatment under election law.
Post-election auditing of systems and controls
The bill authorizes additional audits involving voter rolls, voting equipment, chain of custody, absentee ballots, provisional ballots, and legal compliance.
Properly structured audits can identify vulnerabilities, improve procedures, and strengthen public confidence. Audit rules, county-selection methods, standards, and findings should be transparent and based on neutral criteria established in advance.
Where We Strongly Disagree
Despite these positive provisions, several sections of HB 958 directly conflict with the Forward Party’s commitment to voter choice, political competition, electoral innovation, and equal access to the political process.
A blanket ban on ranked-choice voting
The bill would prohibit ranked-choice voting in every North Carolina primary and election.
The NCFP strongly opposes this provision.
Ranked-choice voting allows voters to express their preferences among multiple candidates without being forced to choose between voting sincerely and voting strategically. It can encourage broader participation, reduce the spoiler effect, create space for independent and emerging-party candidates, and reward candidates capable of earning support beyond a narrow political base.
North Carolina does not need to mandate ranked-choice voting statewide in order to recognize that an outright prohibition is unnecessary and counterproductive. Local governments should be allowed to consider pilot programs conducted under clear state standards, and lawmakers should evaluate evidence rather than outlawing reform before voters can test it.
The proper response to electoral innovation is careful implementation and public evaluation—not a permanent ban.
Making petition drives harder for new parties and unaffiliated candidates
The bill would prohibit compensating petition circulators based on the number of signatures collected.
Standing alone, that may sound like an anti-fraud provision. In practice, however, North Carolina already imposes significant petition requirements on new political parties and unaffiliated candidates. Prohibiting a widely used compensation method without reducing the signature burden or modernizing the petition process would make ballot access more expensive and difficult.
Election law should not operate as an incumbent-protection system for established parties.
Any restriction on petition compensation should be paired with broader reforms, such as:
- reducing excessive signature requirements;
- permitting secure electronic petitioning;
- improving and accelerating signature validation;
- establishing clear cure procedures;
- creating a practical and affordable path to ballot access.
Without those accompanying reforms, this provision would undermine political competition.
Expanding party-insider control over candidates
The bill would increase the required period of party affiliation before a candidate may file in a party primary from 90 days to 365 days, while allowing party executive committees to waive the requirement at their discretion.
The NCFP opposes this structure.
A one-year affiliation requirement creates an unnecessary barrier to candidacy and makes it more difficult for citizens to respond to changing circumstances, emerging issues, or unexpected vacancies. At the same time, the waiver provision gives party insiders the power to decide selectively who may receive an exception.
Election laws should be neutral and predictable. They should not create one rule for ordinary citizens and another rule that party leadership may waive for preferred candidates.
Preventing neutral encouragement of voter participation
The bill includes restrictions that could prevent election officials from publicly encouraging voter turnout.
Election officials should never promote a candidate, party, or electoral outcome. But neutral messages encouraging citizens to register, learn the rules, and participate in elections are legitimate public services.
North Carolina should prohibit partisan election advocacy by election administrators. It should not prohibit nonpartisan civic education or neutral encouragement to vote.
Areas That Require Stronger Safeguards
Other provisions may have legitimate purposes but need clearer standards, transparency, and due-process protections.
Challenges based on post-election database audits
The bill establishes a process for identifying and challenging ballots after an election based on government database records.
Accurate databases can help identify genuine eligibility problems. But government records can also be incomplete, outdated, or mismatched. A database result should initiate a careful review—not create a presumption that a voter acted unlawfully.
Before a lawful ballot is rejected, the voter should receive:
- prompt and documented notice;
- the specific evidence supporting the challenge;
- sufficient time and a practical opportunity to respond;
- access to a clear cure process;
- uniform standards applied statewide;
- meaningful appeal rights.
The State should also disclose the number of voters flagged, the number ultimately found ineligible, and the false-positive rate of the matching system.
Potential noncitizen records
Only United States citizens may vote in North Carolina elections. That requirement should be enforced.
However, information suggesting that a registered voter may not be a citizen should trigger verification, not automatic removal. Government citizenship records may reflect an older immigration status and may not account for later naturalization.
Removal procedures must include individualized confirmation, reliable data matching, notice, time to respond, and a straightforward restoration process when an error occurs.
Election security is not strengthened by removing eligible citizens because a database was incomplete or outdated.
Incomplete citizenship answers on registration applications
An applicant who states that the applicant is not a citizen should not be registered. But declining to answer or accidentally leaving a question blank should not automatically be treated as proof of ineligibility.
Applicants should receive notice and a reasonable opportunity to complete or correct an incomplete application. The goal should be to establish eligibility accurately, not to reject otherwise eligible citizens over a curable omission.
Discretionary audits by a partisan elected official
Audits by the State Auditor can improve administration, but the selection of counties and audit subjects should not rest solely on broad personal discretion.
North Carolina’s State Auditor is an elected partisan official. To preserve confidence, counties should be selected through transparent procedures established in advance, including random selection, published risk-based criteria, or a combination of both.
The audit manual, methodology, county-selection process, findings, and corrective-action reports should be public.
Suspension of precinct officials
Precinct officials who are incompetent, violate election law, or fail to perform their duties should be subject to suspension or removal.
However, Election Day suspension authority and future-service prohibitions require clear standards and procedural protections. Terms such as “incompetency,” “failure to discharge duties,” and “other satisfactory cause” should not be applied inconsistently or politically.
Suspensions should require written findings, prompt review, and an appeal process.
Campaign-Finance Transparency
HB 958 also raises several campaign-finance disclosure thresholds and creates or expands exemptions.
The NCFP supports reducing unnecessary paperwork for small campaigns and minor transactions. But administrative simplicity should not become a justification for reducing meaningful public disclosure.
North Carolina voters should be able to identify who is financing candidates, parties, independent expenditures, and referendum campaigns. Any threshold changes should be modest, consistently applied, periodically indexed, and structured to avoid giving established party organizations advantages over new parties or independent political activity.
Transparency should increase as political spending becomes more significant.
A Better Legislative Approach
Election administration is too important to be handled through a single package that combines technical improvements with controversial restrictions on voting methods, candidates, parties, and ballot access.
The General Assembly should separate HB 958 into distinct measures.
A bipartisan election-administration bill could include:
- transparent ballot-counting procedures;
- statistically sound paper-ballot audits;
- reasonable cure deadlines;
- election-worker training;
- emergency staffing;
- equal observer access;
- clear chain-of-custody requirements;
- publicly disclosed post-election audits.
Separate legislation should be used to debate major policy questions such as ranked-choice voting, ballot access, candidate eligibility, petition rules, voter-list challenges, and campaign-finance disclosure.
Separating these issues would allow legislators and the public to evaluate each proposal on its merits rather than forcing an all-or-nothing vote on an omnibus package.
Forward Party Principles for Election Reform
The NCFP believes election laws should follow several basic principles:
- Every eligible voter should have a meaningful opportunity to vote, and every lawful vote should be counted.
- Election procedures should be secure, transparent, understandable, and consistently applied.
- New parties, independent candidates, and unaffiliated voters should not face rules designed to preserve the dominance of established political organizations.
- Election administrators should remain nonpartisan while providing neutral voter education and encouraging civic participation.
- Electoral innovation should be evaluated through evidence, local pilots, public input, and transparent standards—not prohibited because it threatens the existing political system.
- Voter-list maintenance and eligibility challenges should use reliable information, individualized review, notice, due process, and clear appeal rights.
- Audits and enforcement actions should follow neutral rules established in advance and should not depend on the discretion of partisan officeholders.
- Campaign-finance laws should reduce unnecessary burdens while preserving meaningful public transparency.
Looking Forward
As of now, HB 958 is still moving through the committee process in the House and has not yet received a vote of the full chamber. The bill is scheduled for consideration by the House Election Law Committee on June 16, when lawmakers can further debate, amend, approve, or reject the latest version of the legislation.
If approved by the committee, it will advance through remaining House committees and then to the House floor for consideration by the full chamber. If passed there, it will then move to the Senate for a similar committee and floor review process before being sent to Governor Josh Stein for signature or veto.
The Bottom Line
Although HB 958 contains a number of provisions the NCFP can support—particularly those involving transparent ballot counting, paper-ballot audits, extended cure periods, election-worker training, observer access, and stronger administrative review—the positive reforms do not justify provisions that would prohibit ranked-choice voting, make ballot access more difficult, increase party-insider control over candidates, weaken neutral voter-participation efforts, or create voter-removal and challenge procedures without adequate safeguards.
North Carolina should pursue election laws that increase both confidence and participation. We should protect the integrity of elections without protecting the political dominance of the two established parties.
For those reasons, the NCFP encourages the General Assembly to separate the broadly supported administrative reforms from the provisions that restrict competition and voter choice, and to work across party lines on election legislation that is secure, transparent, and non-partisan.
And we ask our supporters to join us in reaching out to our elected representatives to voice our concerns and continue to push for reforms that result in More Voice and More Choice for every North Carolinian.
Send a message to your representative via FairVote or post to the General Assembly's Public Comment page to tell them how you feel.
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