This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timelines, while our human creative director made sure it all made sense. Easy! Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. It's 5.05 and welcome in to a Tuesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, I'm Nick Craig.
Good morning to you. It's hard to believe in less than three months, voters across the state of North Carolina will begin the process of the early voting period leading into a very busy early November Tuesday here across the state of North Carolina as we keep a very close eye on the ever-important midterm elections, not only taking place here across the Tar Heel State, but the rest of the nation. And with the new voting period beginning coming up a little bit later on this year, there's always questions about the rules as it relates to elections. Walks through some of the latest from the North Carolina State Board of Elections as it relates to photo ID. We'll give us some of those details.
Teresa Opaca, CarolinaJournal.com, joins us on the news hour. Voter ID, Teresa, has been through a lot over the last couple of years. A constitutional amendment years back, a bunch of lawsuits. It's been in place now for a couple of elections. Last week, the state board met to approve some new rules.
Was this a unanimous decision? What did some of the debate look like? You had the opportunity to attend that meeting. Yeah. Yes, good morning, Nick.
Thanks for having me.
So I think there was one unanimous vote for the rules that they had, but the majority of them were along party lines, three to two, with the Republican majority voting in favor. One of the rules that drew the most controversy was with photo ID, which it had, you know, a voter could say that they would return with their photo ID and vote provisionally. A second option to fill out a photo ID exception form and vote provisionally.
So that was among the one of the rules, as well as the change where our county board finds a photo ID exception form to be false. This is what drew the most criticism and controversy at the meeting last week. The current rule requires a unanimous vote, but the revised rule would change it to a majority vote, and the majority of the board would be required to initiate the process with the voter by sending them a notice.
So, you know, they went through all this at the meeting. They had public comments that came in on the website, different hearings they had. But they're, you know, basically, We heard from Democrat member Siobhan Millen, who said most of the comments were directed toward the changing of the ruling from unanimous to majority. And she thinks concern is well founded. If majority is going to vote as a bloc a lot, and that's going to make these photo ID debates at the county level into a very partisan vote.
She thinks it's highly destructive to voters' trust in elections and opening up them themselves to a potential problem is what she discussed.
So it it got pretty heated back and forth with along party lines and specifically on that with the photo the photo ID. I mean, Teresa, let's be perfectly blunt and honest about this with our audience. For those that have followed the state board of elections, have followed meetings at their local county board of elections over the last decade or so, partisan votes split 3-2 party line is not anything new. This literally happens every single election cycle. It used to be under previous law in North Carolina that it was the Democrat governor that made those appointments.
So most of those votes went 3-2 Democrat to Republican. We've seen some changes there. It's now state auditor Dave Bollock and his operation over at the state auditor's office that is making those appointments. Those boards are now 3-2 Republican over Democrat. Let's not pretend that this is something new, that there's partisan politics taking place within our board of election systems.
Correct, correct. I mean, for a number of years, it was three to two Democrat rule when the Democrats were in the majority. I covered all those different meetings that they had. We also had board member and secretary Stacey Fore Eggers comment: the text of the statute relating to the photo ID exception does not require unanimous requirement. And he says this was something that was invented.
By this board, previously, when he was in the minority, when the numbered memo was adopted, and did not believe it was, he didn't believe it was faithful to the text of the statute. And he appreciates that the rule being proposed, now adopted, hopefully, now as soon as the Rules Review Commission actually goes over first, being consistent with that statute. And he said he does agree the Rules Review Commission would agree with that. But yes, as he mentioned, as you just mentioned, there were partisan alliance before when the Democrats were in control of the state election board. Teresa, one of the things that makes the North Carolina State Board of Elections very interesting is obviously elections are relatively complex.
And so you've got the law, which of course flows out of the North Carolina General Assembly that they are required to follow. But then there's this level of interpretation, which has grown a lot of criticism over the last couple of years. These numbered memos that you mentioned have essentially, and I've talked to folks like Dr. Andy Jackson and others that say these essentially become the law of the land as it relates to election operations across North Carolina. Those numbered memos came from the previous executive director and the previous board.
And a lot of those things do not directly correlate to what is actually laid out in general statute here in North Carolina, passed by the legislature and then normally signed by the governor. Yeah, that's correct. That's correct. As you said, the laws are made by the General Assembly. The numbered memos were guidance from the previous executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, how they were interpreted.
I know I was talking to Dr. Jackson yesterday. We're talking about other stories involving or other, I believe there's a lawsuit involving other rules saying how things were with that, how she was told not to do something.
So it was basically. stuff that maybe that she was putting in place. Maybe other board members decided to add their two sentences, they say, but it wasn't according to state law or the statutes that were written by the General Assembly. That's correct. So let's go back to this meeting from last week as it relates to photo ID, this exemption form, which has existed all the way since the start of voter ID here in North Carolina.
If for some reason, Teresa, you show up to vote on or during the early voting period on election day, and you do not have an ID. Not that you forgot it, but you don't actually have one of the variety of different issued ID forms, which for most folks is a state driver's license. County boards also offer free voter ID cards. Regardless of the situation, you don't have an ID. You have no valid verification for yourself.
You fill out one of these forms. As I understand it, some of the criticism in the past, and as you were just highlighting a few minutes ago, you had to have a unanimous decision from a split political board to determine whether that exemption form was filled out, not only in good faith, but legally. It is a legally binding document. The risk of perjury, if you're lying on that form, that now goes away. And so if you are true.
Truly filling out this form and do have an ID, or have just chose not to bring it, seems like there could actually be some consequences for that now. Yeah, I would most definitely think there would be, you know, and like you said, if you don't have that, you can vote provisionally or you they have different ways of going about that, but yeah, there should be some definite consequences. I will mention this, which we haven't really touched on. You know, the whole bottom line, what the new board is trying to put into place, and it's not, it's being bipartisan, is avoiding voter fraud. Um believe, you know.
There's the story about, well, nationally, how different illegal voters were, including in the state of North Carolina.
So they're trying to avoid that. They're trying to have a better set of checks and balances. And we had Democrat member Jeff Carmen say at this meeting last week that there isn't a significant voter fraud problem in our state. But we do have a significant problem because there are a number of voters. I think it was well over 1,000.
You can correct me with that, with that story, you know. And to making this the rule majority instead of unanimous, it feeds into that lie, the lie that there is significant voter fraud in the state. But how can you say it's a lie when you have all this? There was a Canadian who was found guilty of voting here illegally. Just going back to all of this, it's just a better set of checks and balances to make sure there isn't.
Or the penalties, like she said, for this Canadian voter, he was found guilty of illegally voting here in the U.S. and in North Carolina. Yeah, he was voting in southeastern North Carolina. The name Dennis Bouchard, we've talked about him here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. And I guess, Teresa, it's this kind of splitting of hairs over what is determined to be significant.
And we recently heard from Sam Hayes, the executive director of the current North Carolina State Board of Elections, that one fraudulent vote in North Carolina is too many. And so this concept of what determines or what is deemed significant is very much up in the air and up for interpretation. I think law-abiding citizens that are allowed to vote would find it very frustrating if they found out somebody that was illegally in the United States or was not legally registered to vote essentially nullified their vote by voting for all of the different candidates than they voted for in something like a presidential election. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
You know, and it's just. You want to use the analogy of people coming here illegally, you know, residing in the U.S. illegally versus someone becoming a citizen. They put all that time and effort to becoming a citizen. Maybe it's not the same, but it's it's but you are a citizen, you're doing your due duty, your due diligence.
It's your right to vote, and it's extremely important because one vote sometimes. Has a lot of implications or a few very few votes. We saw that this past. Primary with Sam Page and current Senate leader Phil Berger. I mean, you would think he had this name reputation for the longest time.
And look what a small number of votes did, and they had a recount. And it just goes to show you your vote is important. And a legal vote is important. Yeah, exactly. We saw a state Supreme Court race back just a couple of years ago, a statewide Supreme Court rate that was decided by less than 705 votes across the entirety of North Carolina, millions of individuals casting ballots there.
So again, this term significant, very much hard to exactly pin down what somebody means when they say that. We've got some additional coverage as the state board of elections has officially okayed some of these photo ID rules. Those will be relevant for the upcoming election, early voting starting in October, Election Day in early November. You can read some more coverage over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. We appreciate the update this morning.
Teresa Opeka joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all.
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Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. Last week, President Donald Trump addressed the nation in that national address. He highlighted concerns about election security, detailing his administration's initiatives to safeguarding the voting process and addressing concerns about election integrity nationwide. The president said the administration analysis shows more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote across the United States. During the address, the president argued that ensuring only eligible citizens are registered to vote and highlighted how essential that is to maintaining public confidence in our nation's elections.
The administration pointed to information generated through the federal systematic alien verification for entitlements program, also known as SAVE. This is not connected to the SAVE Act. This is a completely different system with the same acronym through the SAVE program, which is used to verify immigration and citizenship status. North Carolina was among the states identified according to information released by the Department of Homeland Security. The SAVE program identified 1,599 potential non-U.S.
citizens on North Carolina's voter rolls. North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes said that election officials would carefully review the information before taking action in a re- Recent press release. Starting that off, Hayes said at the State Board of Elections, we take any evidence on ineligible individuals on our voter rolls very seriously. Hayes noted that the 1,599 potential registrants represent, quote, an extremely small percentage, end quote, of North Carolina's approximately 7.8 million registered voters.
However, he emphasized that election officials intend to investigate every potential case. He said, however, one ineligible registrant is still one too many. Therefore, we are developing a process by which the state board and county boards of election records, as well as other available sources, will be researched for evidence that an identified registrant is eligible to vote. Andy Jackson, the director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, said even a relatively small number of ineligible Eligible registrations could have significant consequences in close elections. Jackson told the Carolina Journal, if verified, the report of 1,599 non-citizens on North Carolina's voter rolls is very concerning.
While that represents a very small portion of all registrants in the state, we have had two state Supreme Court elections decided by fewer than 1,000 votes in the past decade. He pointed to two different votes there. Paul Newby in 2020, who won by less than 705 votes, and the race between Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin that we covered in great detail here on the Carolina Journal News Hour that was decided by less than just a few thousand votes in a statewide contest, looking at some of the details from the state board of elections that had well over 5 million individuals casting a ballot in that election. Jackson emphasized previous examples of individuals who were illegally voting in North Carolina. He said, past incidents of non-citizen registrations have been found mostly to be the fault of officials who registered them.
They failed to properly screen for their citizenship, even though the citizenship question is on the registration form. But of course, there are also cases of non-citizens maliciously registering, such as Canadian Dennis Bouchard, who was convicted earlier this year of illegally registering and voting in several North Carolina elections. The Canadian National caught voting in both New Hanover and Pender counties in southeastern North Carolina. According to Sam Hayes, the executive director of the NCSBE, the state board. Is currently developing a process to compare information from state and county election records with other available sources to determine whether each individual identified by the same program, save program, is in fact ineligible to vote.
If election officials cannot conclusively determine a registrant's eligibility through that review, the individual will be contacted regarding their citizenship status. Hayes also stressed that any investigation would follow both state and federal law and that registrants will receive appropriate due process before any removal proceedings begin. He said in the press release, I want to assure the public that we are going to follow all applicable state and federal laws as this process unfolds. Each registrant will be afforded the appropriate due process before any removal proceeding is initiated. He added that this review Process will be conducted transparently with the state board providing updates as additional information becomes available.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections did have a meeting yesterday morning on July the 20th. The topic did not come up. The meeting was already scheduled to discuss some other issues as it relates to absentee voting, but there was no discussion between the board members there with this relatively new information. As again, noted, the president addressing the nation last Thursday night, early Friday morning, the Department of Homeland Security releasing some of this information about potential illegal voter registrations, not only here in North Carolina, but more than a quarter million of them across the entire United States. A little less than, well, one less actually than 1,600 identified in the state of North Carolina.
We will be keeping an eye on this process as we get closer to the early voting period that kicks off in mid-October. Election Day early November coming up as well. You can read more on this story by visiting our website, CarolinaJournal.com. Look for the story with the headline, NC Investigating, North Carolina Investigating 1,599 potential non-citizen voter registrations. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft.
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Save up to 30% with promo code News at Lifelock.com. Terms apply. Good morning again. It's 5.36. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT.
Amazing to say here in the summer of 2026 that we are still keeping an eye on several lawsuits that have unfolded across the state of North Carolina and in the federal court system as it relates to COVID-19. You'll remember back to 2020, 2021, businesses and a variety of different institutions shut down, not only here in North Carolina, but across the nation. A couple of those lawsuits do continue. It walks through one of the latest that we've been keeping an eye on this morning. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Mitch, a couple of North Carolina-based companies that folks are probably very familiar with have been working through some of their legal questions and challenges over the last couple of years as it relates to their insurance companies and ongoing lawsuits. What's the latest that you're following there? Yes, one of the companies is Golden Corral.
So even if you've never eaten at Golden Corral, you've certainly driven by one if you've been in any part of North Carolina for much time at all. The other company is Summit Hospitality, which owns a number of hotels, 18 hotels in North Carolina, including all of the major parts of the state. What happened was, as with every other business, Golden Corral and the hotels associated with Summit Hospitality had to shut down for portions of 2020 and lost a lot of business. And so in dealing with this, they hoped to get some recovery from their insurance companies. But the insurance companies did not treat the COVID pandemic as something that was covered by the policies that Golden Corral and Summit Hospitality had.
So they sued. And in 2021, federal courts ruled against them. that they ruled that their policies did not cover these COVID-related losses.
Well, three years later, in December 2024, the state Supreme Court ruled in a different case involving a company called North State Delhi. That the insurance policies for a restaurant that was involved in that case did cover COVID-related losses. And so the company was allowed to go back and try to claim from the insurance company losses that were related to COVID-19.
So, what happened for Golden Corral and Summit Hospitality is they went back to the federal court and said, look, you should use this rule that is sometimes used to reopen cases and reopen our cases to allow us to pursue these losses through our insurance company because of that December 2024 ruling from the state Supreme Court. And what recently happened, well, the trial courts said no. And what recently happened was the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the trial courts in these cases, saying, no, the rules that would allow these cases to be reopened don't apply here. And even if the state is not a certain Supreme Court has now said in a very similar case that a particular restaurant or restaurant company or chain could go back and try to get compensated for their losses from their insurance company.
That does not. Say that the the federal trial judges should now go back and reopen three-year-old cases to allow the Golden Corral and Summit Hospitality to try to go back and do the same thing. Part of this is legal strategy. Had this case remained entirely within both of these cases, the Golden Corral and Summit Hospitality cases, had they remained completely within the state court system, perhaps the state Supreme Court's ruling would have then applied to their case, but their cases moved to federal court, and the federal court is under no obligation to go back now and reopen the cases after three years and say, well, because the state Supreme Court ruled this way, now these cases need to be reopened for Golden Corral and Summit Hospitality to go back and try to take advantage of what the state Supreme Court said in a state case. You know, Mitch, it's interesting, and I'm kind of racking my brain back to 2020 and 2021 when a lot of these conversations were first taking place.
And that insurance discussion was an interesting one, as many businesses, a lot of them, frankly, across the state of North Carolina and the rest of the United States were closed. Many went to their insurance providers, these major companies, and said, Hey, we're like to file an insurance claim. We're not able to operate our business. And this was something that I remember pretty vividly with a lot of major companies across the U.S. at the time.
Yeah, this is something that's been an issue throughout. I mean, there are things that you know are going to happen, power outages and that sort of thing. In our area of the state, you might be able to get some special coverage for hurricane-related damage, especially coastal businesses. But COVID-19 was not something that really had been planned for. People knew about pandemics, but we really hadn't had a major pandemic in almost a century.
And so this is the type of thing that was probably not clearly spelled out in insurance policies. And this was sort of new territory for people to navigate. Is the COVID-19 pandemic and a shutdown related to that something similar to what would be provided for in other instances under these insurance policies? And remember, Nick, the other thing that has to be factored in here is it wasn't the case where these businesses were operating.
Something bad happened in the business, and then you had to go back and see whether it was something that was insurance-related. This was a case where most of these businesses were fine to operate, but the government said you can't. You have to shut down, or you have to operate at a much smaller basis with many fewer people in your restaurant, or fewer people staying in your hotel.
So, that was another thing that probably was not contemplated when these companies were setting up their insurance policies. And unless they had some specific provision that they could point to, a lot of these insurance companies said, no, this is not the type of thing that's covered in your policy. We're not going to cover it. And as you see in this very case, courts. looking at these policies and what the law says came to some different conclusions.
In the case of Golden Corral and Summit Hospitality, two different federal judges dealing with similar issues both said, no, this is not something that you can call on your insurance company to compensate you for. Whereas in the state court, in a similar case going all the way to the North Carolina state Supreme Court, that court said, yes, this is something that's covered by these policies. And North State Delhi, which was the lead plaintiff in that case, was able to go back and try to get compensation from its insurance company because of the state Supreme Court's ruling.
So a lot of things from the COVID pandemic that we're still dealing with. And I imagine you and I are still going to be talking about some COVID-related cases for months or maybe even years to come. Yeah, like baseball, a great American pastime talking about a COVID-19 lawsuit. And no surprise, Mitch, with the setup of Golden Corral, the buffet or country style serving, I would imagine going back to 2020 and 2021, their business heavily dealing with some of those restrictions and some of the space separations there. I want to draw a little bit of a contrast, though, from one of the other major legal challenges that we've been talking about as it relates to North Carolina COVID shutdowns.
That is the ongoing case between the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association alongside a bunch of restaurants or excuse me, a bunch of bars in North Carolina. They aren't suing their insurance company, Mitch. They're suing the state of North Carolina versus where these two companies that we're talking about are going after their insurance providers, correct? That's right. In the case that you just referenced, which was launched by the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association, the suit targets the governor and the state of North Carolina because of the fact that it was a government-mandated shutdown and the fact that the bar owners are arguing that they were treated differently from similarly situated businesses.
Now, Golden Corral, Summit Hospitality, they were all part of all of the businesses that had to be shut down immediately during the earliest days of COVID-19. But most businesses were allowed to reopen relatively soon. I mean, relatively speaking compared to the bars. And sometimes you had something as you referenced with Gold Growl, where you had spacing. You might have had to take some new safety precautions to ensure that people would not get infected or at least minimize the likelihood that they would get infected with COVID-19.
But they were allowed to operate. And so they could operate. But the private bars who are part of the case that you just referenced, they were not allowed to reopen, even though bars and restaurants. Breweries, wineries, bars, and country clubs were all allowed to reopen. These private bars were forced by government to stay shut down, and that's why they sued the government.
Now, it may be possible that some of these bars also tried to get insurance money, and if they failed, they might have filed suits against their insurance companies too. But the suit that we've been talking about, because it got to the state Supreme Court and got quite a bit of attention, is a suit against government and the governor because of the government's actions, not a suit against the insurance companies. Yeah, a couple of interesting stories that do connect as it relates to those COVID shutdowns, the different pathways through the legal process and system going after two different groups of individuals there. We'll keep an eye on all of those stories. You can read more on this recent decision from the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. We appreciate the update. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe.
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Terms apply. It's 5:55. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, as we round up the show on this Tuesday morning. I want to say congratulations to some of my Carolina Journal colleagues as our publication earned 15 awards, including nine first-place honors in the North Carolina Press Association's annual editorial contest, with recognitions spanning investigative reporting, political coverage, public record journalism, multimedia storytelling, visual design, and audience engagement. Among Carolina Journal's most significant honors were two prestigious first-place awards earned by longtime journalist Mitch Cockey, who just joined us here on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
He received the Henry Lee Weathers Freedom of Information Award for reporting that opens the courthouse doors and the Media and Law Excellence Awards for opening up the courthouse. Courtroom to the public view. The Henry Lee Weathers Freedom and Information Award recognizes excellence in journalism related to public records, open government, and the public's right to know. Kokai's reporting demonstrated how persistent public records and court access reporting can improve accountability as well as expanding public access to government proceedings. His first place in Media and Law Award of Excellence Entry examined legal issues affecting public access to North Carolina courts, reinforcing Carolina Journal's long-standing commitment to open government and transparency.
Donna King, our editor-in-chief over at Carolina Journal, said Mitch Coke has spent decades setting the standard for thoughtful, fair, and deeply informed journalism in North Carolina dedicated to transparency and the rule of law. His reporting is grounded in facts and driven by a belief that the public deserves access to information it needs to hold government accountable. These awards recognize his distinguished career helping North Carolinians better understand the policies that shape our lives. You can read more about the 15 North Carolina Press Association Awards. We've got that link this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
Congratulations to everybody over at the Carolina Journal team. That's going to do it for a Tuesday edition. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT.
