North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) on Thursday vetoed an election overhaul bill passed by the Republican-led legislature last week.
In a video posted on social media, Cooper called the bill “an all-out assault on the right to vote.”
He asserted that the lawmakers had passed the legislation based on “the advice of Trump’s hand-picked election denier, Cleta Mitchell” who was on the phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021.
During that conversation, then-President pressured his fellow Republican, who recorded the call, saying about Georgia’s 2020 election results, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
North Carolina Senate Bill 747, passed by the Republican supermajority, would overhaul the state’s existing election laws, including the addition of new restrictions and deadlines and the further empowering of partisan poll watchers. The measure would also change existing same-day registration rules during the early voting period. Under the new legislation, same-day registrants would have to use a “retrievable ballot” that can be discarded if the county board of elections cannot verify their address.
In his video statement, Cooper asserted that the legislation “has nothing to do with election security and everything to do with keeping and gaining power.”
The governor also promised to veto another election-related bill still working its way through the legislature, should it reach his desk: Senate Bill 749.
In June the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold a decision by the top court in North Carolina that struck down as excessively partisan a GOP-led congressional redistricting plan.
