- Governor Josh Stein vetoes an elections reform bill and legislation granting the Chief Justice greater powers.

And a new Elon poll measures how North Carolinians view themselves politically.

This is State Lines.

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♪ - Hello again, welcome to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, Dawn Vaughan of the News and Observer.

To her right, Senator Jay Chaudhuri of Wake County and Representative Howard Penny of both Harnett and Johnston counties.

And Colin Campbell of WUNC News is in seat four.

Hello everybody.

- Hello.

- How are you?

- It seems slower, but then you read the headlines, it's not slower out there in North Carolina.

- We had some good news this week.

- Lots of news, I guess.

(laughing) - A good amount of news.

- A good amount of work for you, Colin.

Well, Governor Josh Stein vetoed that recent election reform bill that Republican lawmakers approved I don't know, two or three weeks ago.

The bill would reduce early voting days from 17 down to 10 days for primaries and runoffs.

The state auditor could have launched post-election audits and citizens could have challenged ballots up to three days following election day.

Governor Stein, in the veto note, says it would cause chaos, it makes it harder to vote around for everyone, and allows sore losers a chance to overturn elections they lost.

We'll start with you, Colin.

No surprise, this bill was vetoed.

Sets the stage for that growing, I guess people are paying attention, November legislative session.

- Yeah, so the legislature's not coming back to town until after the election, so that's when these vetoes could be dealt with.

So none of this is gonna come along the short term.

And then once you get into this lame duck session after November, it's gonna be fascinating to see, particularly in this elections bill, do the Republicans have the numbers they need?

I mean, the person to watch in a lot of these is Representative Carla Cunningham, formerly a Democrat, now unaffiliated, lost her primary, sometimes votes with the Republicans.

She voted with the Democrats on this one.

So whether she changes forces or whether there's even the numbers there to get veto overrides across the finish line in November, after the election, some folks may have lost their re-election and they might be less inclined to take time out of their life to come to Raleigh.

I don't know if they'll have full strength in either Republican or Democratic caucuses.

- Representative Penny, surprised by Josh Stein vetoing this one?

- Not really.

Looking around the table, I'm the youngest person that's ran for office ever since 2000 and been in lots of primaries.

The thing that I hear from my colleagues on either side of the aisle is 17 days is kind of cruel, unusual punishment.

And being a former county commissioner chair, I put a pencil on what it was costing us for those days that extended, particularly Sunday voting.

And we found out it was costing the county a lot of money and we were getting no return as far as people turning out.

I'm a big advocate.

We're a society that's trained to be at a place during operating hours, eight to five, whatever.

So to me, 17 days down to 10, I voted the first time in 1968 where you stood in long, long lines.

It's come a long way.

And remember, this is only in the primary and doesn't start till March of '27.

Primaries, it will not affect this fall's elections at all and there's still 17 days during the general, is my understanding of the bill.

- So 1968, you cast your first ballot.

- Yes.

- Humphrey guy or Nixon or back then, you had all kinds of choices.

- Well, I had actually moved to Emporia, Virginia and had to drive back home and had only been there a short while and drove back home to cast my ballot.

I'll never forget voting for Nixon in '72.

Me and my wife stood in line for four hours with a baby in our arms and he got impeached.

I said, I started questioning.

(laughing) - Senator Chaudhuri, I have heard this from both sides.

Democrats do want more voting days, but they will say it's expensive in the primary and these runoffs.

People don't show up for early voting, at least 17 days worth, but there's an appearance to it.

It's good politics for the Democrats.

It did appear that way this week.

- Well, it's not just good politics.

I think it's good public policy to make sure that voters have access to the ballots and you're right.

I mean, there was an argument that was made around expenses and around the folks that vote, but here's another statistic that was cited during the debate in the Senate is that most of our voters decide who the candidate is gonna be for their district in the primary, not in the general election because most of the districts are either very Republican or very Democratic.

We have a quarter million voters that vote in primaries, and so by reducing the number of days from 17 to 10, you're not allowing for as many voters to get access to the ballot, especially those that are working.

I hope we don't have folks that are waiting in line the way that you did in 1968, but there are a couple other provisions to talk about.

I mean, one is the so-called Griffin Rule that basically allows for three-day post-election ballot challenge, so challenging the ballot after the votes are counted, which on its face really doesn't seem to be fair, and then secondly, providing more post-audit authority to the state.

- But the ballot would have to be in by election day or it wouldn't count, but you could challenge a legal ballot after election day.

- That's right, that's right.

- So three days after election day is good for some things and bad for others, is that right?

- Well, I think the idea that the losing candidate can challenge a ballot after the votes have been counted three days after the election certainly, I think, undermines the confidence that the voters have of whether their votes count or not.

- Dawn, this is one issue where you hear one side and you go, "Okay, that sounds pretty good."

You hear the other side and that sounds pretty good too.

Everybody has a point in this.

- Sure, and I feel like what I'm seeing now with Governor Stein vetoing this and the debate around it is almost kind of the first of Stein's, he's what, almost a year and a half into his term of the type of thing that he's been part of debates with in the past.

I know we're talking about the courts bill too, and so this is more of your sort of typical partisan political fight with elections and voting between Democrats and Republicans.

That's a long time until after the November election and that session, and depending on how things go, Republicans in control, like we'll see what the legislation is that they wanna put forth beyond these veto overrides, but I do think Cunningham representative Nasif Majeed is also unaffiliated.

There's also Democrats and Republicans that may or may not want to come back to Raleigh in November, could resign early if they've lost, so a lot of this is up in the air still.

- Keep us thinking until the fall.

Very quickly though, just give us a rundown.

What happened on Thursday?

The State Board of Elections had all those decisions to make where local county boards could not reach a unanimous decision, so the State Board gets to decide.

Mainly early voting ballot locations and dates.

- Yeah, so the two controversies in these 20 out of 100 counties that couldn't get a bipartisan agreement at the county level, a lot of them was about Sunday voting, and so in most of those cases, the State Board voted also along party lines with Republicans in the majority to not have Sunday voting in some of the counties where it was contested.

There were a couple where they allowed just one day of Sunday voting just for a few hours as sort of a compromise.

That was in, I think, Lee and Rowan counties.

Then the other issue was around early voting locations in a number of counties where it came down to a partisan split.

You saw Republicans wanted to see more early voting sites in conservative areas, Democrats wanted them in the more urban or left-leaning areas, and there was also some controversies about college campuses.

Again, kind of split on that.

They kept voting on campus at Western Carolina University in Jackson County, decided not to do early voting on college campuses in the Greensboro area.

So mixed results on some of those issues.

- Kelly, I will say the press conference that Governor Stein had earlier this week when he vetoed the bill raised those issues.

Actually had a speaker from, college student from A&T that talked about removing the voting sites from A&T and Greensboro, and obviously, the Sunday voting was another issue.

One of the things that Democrats have long argued about the bill now that we see it implemented is if when you have to require unanimity and now you have a split local board of elections on what to do with sites, it defaults into a partisan board of elections, which has done exactly what Democrats have said would happen, and that is to shut down a number of the sites and eliminate Sunday voting.

- I remember when all this happened and we asked the legislative leaders, well, what's gonna happen when it goes up to the state board of elections because they need to make a decision?

Well, you get a 12-hour day, really.

- Yeah, I mean, that meeting started at nine, didn't end until after 8 p.m.

It was a long day with a lot of election officials from across the state just having to sit there and wait for their turn to argue their side of what their early voting proposals were gonna be.

- Seems with these voting laws, you can't split the baby on a compromise.

I would think most people would be frustrated by that.

- Yeah, even on the ones that were sort of pitched as a compromise, you saw a lot of people who were not really happy with how it shook out.

- Well, we got another veto override to possibly watch for in November, at least lawmakers on the Republican side have to consider it.

The governor vetoed the bill that would've granted new powers to the state Supreme Court.

It's a proposal to let the Supreme Court justices censure, possibly remove lower court judges regardless of recommendation by the state's Judicial Standards Commission.

The chief justice could remove trial judges on the recommendation of the Judicial Standards Commission.

The governor says the Supreme Court should not be removing other judges at a lower level who are quote, "Elected by the people."

So once again, Stein says, "This is my reasons," and we'll hear veto it, November here we come.

- Yeah, this is another of the political fights that we've seen before.

Sometimes it's executive versus legislative.

You know, now it's versus judicial.

And again, it's giving more power to your particular political party that has control at the time or the chief justice.

And this one, I don't remember the exact vote when it passed, but again, this is kind of the same thing that how this could have huge implications and it's all gonna be a matter of who comes to the legislative session in November before Thanksgiving.

- And you need three-fifths of those in attendance, right, Representative?

- That's correct.

- People have said that this bill, you can read about it in the Chief Justice House, we get all these grand powers as would the Supreme Court.

But in practice, is it already in motion a bit and this streamlines a process?

I'm not an attorney and I've never practiced before the Supreme Court.

- Well, excuse me, I'm not an attorney either, but the streamline, I think, is a good word.

And obviously, the legislature does not have, this would be obviously judicial branch, and I'm a firm believer in the three distinct branches.

And I don't think we should be ever in the legislative, I'm sorry, ever in the judicial or the executive.

- Veto, is this something they would try to veto override or does Josh Stein have a point, Representative Penny, that these lower court judges, a lot of them are elected, why would you let the Supreme Court just pop them out of office?

- Well, my understanding is they've already been under a judicial review prior to ever getting to a place that the Chief Justice has to make the decision.

And I think Dawn has actually hit on it very elaborately.

It's gonna depend on who all shows up in their seats after the November, whoever loses, wins, whatever, shows up.

I'm one of the deputy whips, so that's one of the things we do.

We count not only the Democrats sitting in their seats, we count the Republicans and we see if we've got the votes, either way.

- 60%.

You are an attorney, Senator Chaudhuri.

Is this more of a cleanup of policy?

Are we looking under the hood of a motor we don't understand how it works?

- No, it's very clear how it works.

One, this is about protecting the independence of the judiciary, but at the same time, when we talk about the independence of the judiciary, we're talking about a movement to concentrate more power with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

So, as you mentioned, Kelly, a vast majority of our trial court judges are elected.

And what we are doing now is allowing the Chief Justice to be able to remove a trial court judge without pay, which I think puts a lot of pressure on that judge.

And the analogy that Governor Stein mentioned is we don't allow the governor to remove an independently elected member of the Council of State.

How are we allowing the Chief Justice to remove a trial court judge?

- Your thoughts?

- I can see the merit in that discussion.

And remember, all elections have consequences.

So, you pass a law now, you may have to deal with it down the road when the other party is in power.

- Colin, statistically, people that are following the state Supreme Court, whether you like Paul Newby or not, will say, "Oh, you're giving Newby all this."

No, you're not giving, you're giving the Chief Justice his seat.

We're looking into the future, and Newby's facing retirement here in a couple years.

- Yeah, so I mean, these sort of seats flip back and forth between the two political parties, and certainly if you lock this in, Republicans in the legislature might wanna change it down the road, but they may, you know, four or six years out not have the votes to do that.

So, that's sort of a risk.

This is gonna be really interesting if it does go into law.

How does it really work in practice?

'Cause I think on one hand, you have the argument of, well, if you've got a judge facing serious misconduct, they're charged with a felony.

Most of us would agree you don't wanna wait until the investigation's over.

You want that person suspended and off the bench.

But you see comments from House Speaker Destin Hall saying that we've got judges who are letting violent offenders out on the streets, and we need to show them there are consequences.

So, that sort of opens the door to, does Paul Newby take people off the bench because he doesn't like their rulings, much less their actual conduct as a judicial official?

So, that's, I guess, is a sort of we'll see, assuming this even becomes law.

- But look, I think you could expedite the work the Judicial Standards Commission does in order to get to the same outcome that we need.

I mean, the other thing I would just argue with you, Kelly, is it's not necessarily about the position.

And I'll just use an example.

I mean, I think the fact that the General Assembly has concentrated power with the state auditor, that no other country, no other state in the country has the auditor vested with power to focus on state board of elections, often shows that we're making decisions to concentrate power based on the partisanship of that office as opposed to what that office holder-- - And it could come back to bite you if you can't change it again when it's the other way.

- That's right.

- What is, someone answer this question, 'cause this is not, Judicial Standards Commission, what does it do?

Is it a full-time body?

Does anyone know what it does in practice other than investigate judges?

- Yeah, so, I mean, the Judicial Standards Commission, my understanding is it's an appointed position.

I do not think it's full-time.

I mean, there is full-time staff, but it is charged to review the conducts of a trial judge or a judge if they believe there's been some kind of misconduct carried out.

- One of those bodies that pops up-- - Yeah, and the appointments to that have been shifted more in favor of Republicans recently, too, so.

- That's right.

And you feel like you're supposed to know what all these groups do, and it's just really, you just don't because they just kind of pop up and then they'll go away.

Our next topic is on polling.

Elon University is asking North Carolinians online how they identify politically.

The pollsters say the takeaway is that we form voting groups for reasons other than simply our political party affiliation.

So, check this out.

Over three-quarters of those polled in this poll called themselves both middle class and anti-racist.

They're also proud to be a North Carolinian.

38% then said, "I'm MAGA."

29% were Democratic Socialists, 20% were Libertarian, and 26% checked a box that said they're politically homeless.

800 people were polled, Colin.

I didn't see traditional Republican, I didn't see conservative, I didn't look at the poll.

I read the releases and studied the bill or the PR reports on it.

Very interesting though.

The brand's MAGA, Democratic Socialism.

Proud to be a North Carolinian.

- Yeah, I mean, I think this sort of speaks to the sort of general takeaway that we have a very moderate state.

I mean, you haven't seen a lot of the Democratic Socialism candidates that you've seen in other states pop up here in North Carolina.

You know, Roy Cooper is perceived as a moderate, didn't have any opposition in the primary to the US Senate from somebody further to the left than him.

So I think the fact that you see low numbers for these sort of political extremes, whether it's, I identify as MAGA, not only I support the president, but that's my personal political brand is a fairly small percentage.

Democratic Socialism, a relatively small percentage.

Most people, I think, find themselves somewhere in the middle and maybe are not necessarily as attracted to that kind of a strong label on their political views.

- Representative Penny, these polls are fun, but 29% of this state does not view itself as Democratic Socialists.

There just ain't no way.

- I would agree with that.

I mean, I guess I was blessed to be raised in a family, my mother's family were all the old conservative Southern Democrats.

My family was all the old Southern conservative Republicans.

I never saw any difference on how we thought.

I really did not.

We didn't get to the kitchen table on Sundays and all have a big fight.

We basically thought the same.

But the situation we're dealing with today, those two parties are no longer pretty much there.

Most of the old conservative Southern Democrats have gone on to their reward, so to speak.

And so a lot of cases with both parties, we've kind of put a lot of us in the middle and I don't consider myself the middle of anything.

I had the good pleasure of going, fortunate pleasure of going to Cuba in 2019 on a mission trip.

You know, communism, socialism is what it is.

And you see that going on in New York City now.

And I tell people, just go 90 miles off the Florida coast and you can get all the socialism you want and you'll come back and you'll be glad that you're an American.

- Senator Chaudhuri, on cable news and all these analysis shows, I mean, every Democrat's now a socialist.

And I guess for what, the last seven years, every Republican's been MAGA.

So I guess everyone gets their turn at being labeled in some way or fashion.

But it's good for discourse.

I mean, people are aligning with MAGA and democratic socialism, at least in this poll.

- Well, look, I think on the Democratic side, and certainly nationally, I think it's a misconception that the primary electorate is more to the left because if you look at most of the traditional Democratic voters, they tend to be older, they tend to be white, they tend to be women over 55.

But I think what I find really interesting about this poll is on the one hand, it really suggests a lot of polarization 'cause you got MAGA on one side and socialism on the other side.

But to Colin's point, it actually shows you that there is a real adherence to focusing on economic issues 'cause it's about the middle class.

And I would probably interpret anti-racist to mean that the public just wants the elected officials to be respectful and to be civil to each other.

And I think so much of social media contributes to the polarization, not this show, for sure.

I mean, if anything-- - We try not to.

- We do the opposite.

But I think the poll actually shows that there's more of a desire to have respect and accountability in focusing on the middle class.

- Dawn, somebody in that poll said, "I'm MAGA, I'm proud to be a North Carolina middle class, "and I'm against racism."

So I mean, it sort of covers-- - I thought it was really interesting about the large numbers.

I think that maybe one of the highest was proud to be North Carolinian.

It just shows North Carolina is the best state in the country.

It's nice that we all agree on that this is such a great place to live.

Another high turnout answer, there was middle class, but I thought it was the beach person.

People like that, there's a lot of coming around.

There's a lot of people in the world.

- You're country, I think, was one of the ones.

- Yeah, and I thought that there are a lot of things that a majority of North Carolina agrees on all the time.

And that middle is part of the reason why it's a politically purple state.

And there's fringes on everything.

You can poll people on a wide variety of things and be surprised that 20, 30% believe certain things.

- And I am a beach person I will go on the record to say, I'm not a mountain guy, I've always been a beach guy.

- Mountain's for the win.

- Mountain's for the win.

- We have both, that's why we're the best state, right?

- State Auditor Dave Boliek's released his findings into some operations of the Charlotte area transit system.

Boliek's team says an estimated 60% of light rail riders, lesser percentage for bus riders, don't pay.

Security doesn't enforce non-payment, they say.

The Metro says they don't want their transit employees getting into physical altercations over it, it could be over $5 million in lost revenue.

A security audit found that two Charlotte police officers are the ones assigned to the quote Metro transit unit.

Auditors say light rail cameras were not connected with Charlotte police's real-time crime center when Iryna Zarutska was murdered last summer.

Senator Jay Chaudhuri, I wouldn't really worry about an audit of the Charlotte Metro Rail, except there is Iryna Zarutska last year.

And as much as campaign consultants have tried, they've pulled that woman's name through the primaries at least, and into the general if they can.

- Yeah, it's unfortunate.

I find it interesting you're asking a Raleigh legislator about issues in Charlotte.

- You guys are Harnett County.

(laughing) - But look, I'll say a couple things.

I think one is, I think the audit does raise issues around safety and accountability.

I think two police officers is probably not sufficient, and I think there is the need to have additional accountability to generate revenue.

But look, the other thing I will say is, the General Assembly is also responsible for, can provide enabling legislation to allow Mecklenburg County to increase sales tax, which then can go into transit.

So there are opportunities, I think, for the state to be a partner with Mecklenburg County and trying to, the city of Charlotte, and trying to solve this issue.

- Well, raising taxes, though.

I don't know how popular that's gonna be.

- Well, there is a reluctance.

I mean, maybe you can shift, I mean, maybe you can hold responsibility.

- What they voted for.

I mean, they voted for sales tax.

- When I saw this topic, my takeaway is, especially when you were talking about the people who work there not wanting to get into something with another person, is anytime you put some sort of mandate, some sort of laws, who's actually going to execute this?

What are the workers that are tasked with this?

What's their daily life gonna be if you have to do this?

How much are you paying them?

And that's kind of like my view on it.

- I don't see a partisan issue, Representative Penny.

This is an audit, and if I'm an employee of the transit, knowing the headlines I've seen about the transit, I wouldn't want to get in a fight with someone on the bus or the train over a fare.

I can't blame them.

- I agree.

And even though I believe in the Second Amendment and all those type things, we don't need to be arming the bus drivers and the people and whatever.

So it's a safety issue.

And obviously I don't live in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area, but I'm in Raleigh, obviously, every day, and there's instances downtown in the Raleigh transit system that are starting to have all ops opportunities because of transits or whatever down there.

So even though we're talking about Charlotte, we've got the same opportunity possibly here in Raleigh.

- And they're closing up the little walkway at the bus station.

- Yeah, the bus station downtown Raleigh.

I mean, that's the challenge I think for all transit systems, including here in the Triangle, is the degree to which people use that as a nice air-conditioned place to hang out versus a way to get from point A to point B. When you get a lot of the former, that's where you start to have some problems and it becomes a less attractive proposition for people who have cars and might consider public transit to get to work that way.

- I've got about three minutes left.

I want to touch on this last story about how D.C.

Republicans are lining up behind former State House Representative Jennifer Balkcom's U.S.

House campaign.

It's out in Western North Carolina.

Balkcom replaced the incumbent Congressman Chuck Edwards as the Republican nominee.

She's facing Democrat Jamie Ager.

Ms.

Balkcom announced endorsements from both President Trump and U.S.

House Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this week.

And if you're Jamie Ager, you're holding a multi-million dollar campaign funding advantage.

You're a top tier candidate recruited by the National Democrats to seek that seat and we're heading into the final weeks of election 2026.

Representative Penny, quickly, one side has money, the Republicans got endorsements, so there's some energy on the right and a lot on the left in that race.

- Well, absolutely.

And the Ager family obviously is very well known in that area.

Representative Balkcom has done an outstanding job in the legislature.

I'll say this, she's not bashful.

She's rolled up her sleeves and gone to work, as we would say, in the country, actually in the rural part of North Carolina.

But Hurricane Helene, she has been there.

From the time she was a freshman there, she articulates things very well.

Again, she will take a position, she will take a stand.

She will not be intimidated if she's elected to go to Washington, D.C.

I call her my friend, I serve with her on AGNR, which is Agricultural Natural Resources on the finance part.

And we didn't always agree, but I found out she's somebody you can have a dialogue with and let her explain what's going on with her and you can come to a compromise and work for what's best for the most people.

- Got about 70 seconds.

Senator Chaudhuri, endorsements, that's high-powered endorsements if you're a Republican, but money's money.

- Yeah, I mean, look, two things.

I would say Jamie Ager, like you said, comes from, was recruited, comes from a politically well-connected family with deep roots, doesn't have a political background, which I think is a positive thing today.

I think the real challenge for Balkcom is she's gotta balance her advocacy for her region at the state level with a Trump administration that has arguably failed.

And so I think she's gonna have to juggle her loyalty or to the president against the failure of the federal government.

- Fair point, Dawn, with your last 20 seconds of this show, there are people out there saying these two candidates sound just alike, though.

- Well, I don't know, that's up to them to make that pitch to the voters.

I do think if Balkcom is successful, that will change.

There'll be two women in the congressional delegation on the Republican side, so that would be a significant change for them.

But the election is finally coming quick.

- All right, last word for you, 15 seconds.

- Yeah, it's really hard to build name recognition when you've been elected in one county in that big of a region in a very short time.

So uphill battle for Balkcom for sure, but it is a conservative-leaning district.

- A lot of work, a lot of sweat out there in the 11th Congressional, a lot of fun for us to sit and watch it.

Thank you so much for being on.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Hope we've informed you.

We appreciate you more for watching us.

Email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbs.org.

I'll read that email, I promise you.

I'm Kelly McCullen, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.

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