- New state elections rules earned Governor Stein's attention over absentee and voter ID provisions.

The Supreme Court's letting the Trump administration continue its work to possibly regulate mail-in voting and was a promise to give North Carolina voters more voting access kept.

This is State Lines.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to State Lines, I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, Billy Ball of Cardinal and Pine, Graig Meyer of the North Carolina Justice Center to his right, Theresa Kostrzewa of Capitol Advantage, and Jeff Moore is in seat four of the John Locke Foundation.

Hello everyone.

Lots of election, I guess it's a good time to discuss elections because there's a lot of lawsuits and rules being made and governors pushing back against rules, Theresa.

New statewide rules on voter ID and absentee ballots were approved but delayed by the state's rules commission this week.

That commission received enough written opposition letters to refer the rules for legislative review that does prevent the rules for now from mostly taking place or becoming effective.

The voter ID rule will allow a simple majority of a local elections board to disqualify a ballot if the voter couldn't show ID and the majority thinks the voter's not being quite truthful as to their reasons.

Absentee ballot rules would be tightened.

For example, ballots received in unsealed or opened envelopes would be tossed but the voter would be told of the error and allowed to vote again.

The state board of elections says it might implement some of these rules ahead of the election using a different process.

I won't dare dive into that in a five minute segment, Theresa but it's, you know, we're right here at what, envelopes going out next week maybe or very, very soon and rules are being changed or being codified.

What's your take?

- So my take is that most viewers probably don't realize that we have a relatively new process in North Carolina which says that if the rules review commission makes rules, which by the way, they make rules for almost every law that gets passed, right?

That you only need 10 people to object and therefore those rules have to go to the legislature and then be approved by the legislature.

So given where we are right now and they've gotten their 10 or more letters, this is really a layup for the Stein administration because what it's gonna take for these rules to take effect would be the legislature comes back before November to approve them and from everybody on both sides is continuing to say, we are not gonna come back until after the elections in November for that scorched earth session.

So I think it's kind of, this is an instance where I think it's kind of moot and we're not gonna have to deal with them.

- Graig as a former Senator and they're saying we don't wanna come back for this.

Why go through all this just to say, we'll wait till after the election to even consider reviewing the rule?

- Well, I mean, this is a case where a new elections administration wants the general assembly move the administration over to the auditor and they had to set up a whole new process.

Now they're a little bit late in trying to get this stuff through and so now they're stuck on this timeline as Theresa just explained.

And I was in the Senate when we passed the law that changed it so that the rules review would have to kick back to the general assembly with the 10 objections.

And it was an argument at the time of like we really shouldn't have to send all these rules back to the general assembly because some of them are gonna have us look at things that just we don't need to pay attention to.

And some of them are gonna come in a period when the general assembly is not gonna be here and then we're gonna be stuck 'cause we're not gonna be able to proceed on the rulemaking where we have to wait for the general assembly to come back.

And in this case, the Republicans are stuck by a rule of their own making.

- Billy, in this case, go to the voter ID rule.

You don't have a voter ID and you go before the election board or fill out whatever they make you do.

It's up to a majority of the local board to believe you're telling the truth as to why you don't have a voter ID.

And then absentee ballot, the envelope arrives open.

People would say that's tainted, it would toss it out.

Is this just solidifying what people assume is already in place or is there something new about these provisions?

- I think what people would be surprised to know, the average North Carolinian would be surprised to know that there's a possibility with this rule that when they turn in their ballot, that it can be thrown out.

Under the previous, that's kind of like everyone's worst nightmare, right?

When you vote, it counts.

Everyone in America has the confidence that you spoke your mind when you wrote those names on the ballot or checked the box.

And now I think with the potential for these new rules where it's a simple majority, you've got a situation where people are going to argue.

No matter what, they're going to say, a partisan majority can make a decision to throw out your ballot.

Before when it was a unanimous requirement of the local board of election, you were saying, oh, this is a bipartisan agreement here that this ballot should not be counted.

The simple majority changes that math.

And beyond that, it's going to lead to some fears about people having their votes turned out.

We're not that far removed from the Jefferson Griffin election.

People are afraid of what happens to their ballot right now.

- Jeff, this rules commission, why is it not more famous than it probably deserves to be?

Because it sounds like this group has a big job.

- Yeah, it flies under the radar.

And I think one thing that North Carolinians may not understand completely is that how many of the laws that are passed require just series and series of rules for actual implementation.

And so on the principle debate for voter ID and integrity, establishing eligibility and everything, I think that debate is pretty much finished if you look at poll numbers across the partisan divide.

But the implementation for these things is really tricky.

And you see that here.

And it feels like deja vu all over again with things happening in front of the elections a little bit too close to the election for them to actually come into practice before.

So they're going to have to, I think, kick this can down the road and we'll see it next time around.

- Well, up next in elections, mail-in balloting.

The US Supreme Court ruled this week the Trump administration's executive order regulating mail-in ballots could partially proceed.

The justices ruled that lower federal courts froze the executive order before the Trump administration could write the rules governing that order.

Speaking of the rules, the president wants federal agencies to compile a list of eligible US voters.

The Postal Service would then oversee mail-in voting, create standards for ballots, and collect those voter lists from the individual states.

The Supreme Court is likely to weigh in on those direct actions later.

This had nothing to do with what Trump really wants to do.

This was a process play.

It continues.

Then on Thursday, Jeff Jackson announces another injunction to stop the Postal Service because it had rules in place.

It gets confusing.

- Yeah, yeah, it's very confusing.

And there's a line of demarcation here between where the state should actually be administrating the elections as far as the Constitution is concerned and how much power the federal administration would actually have to enforce these things.

So the John Locke Foundation, we really view this as a state issue, but this isn't coming from a vacuum.

These are reactions to grievances we've had for years about establishing integrity in the election process and following a lot of kind of more forceful actions consistent with the Trump administration to actually get that into place.

But it's a matter of whether or not that's the appropriate place for these solutions to be coming from.

- Theresa, it seems the Trump administration is asking a lot of the Postal Service.

I mean, they're delivering the mail.

They need to get revenue up.

There's a lot of challenges running that business, if you will.

But now mail-in balloting is asking a lot.

- Well, you know, it's funny.

I wonder why would anyone want that job, right?

So North Carolinian Louis DeJoy, mega donor to Republicans and Trump had that job.

Trump turned on him.

I kind of feel sorry for the new guy.

I think it's David Steiner or something, another Trump ally.

But I think the bottom line of all of this that I think about, you guys, is that any time a party makes a law that they think is going to benefit themselves, you have to think what's gonna happen when we are no longer in power, right?

And that's when the tables can get turned.

So right now the Republicans are in control, but they're making laws and rules that when the Democrats are in control can be used against them, which is no different than gerrymandering when the Democrats were in charge.

They drew the lines to benefit Democrats and now Republicans do it for them.

So I think we always need to be careful as citizens and lawmakers to ensure we're not gonna regret what we're doing down the road.

- Graig, partisanship's always been part of all of these issues.

And now we're talking about the election integrity.

To her point, the rules not could change, but who applies the rules could change as soon as, well, this fall, technically.

Is this a new era of doing business or is technology and social media and 24-hour news covers just shining light on what's been happening in this country for 100 years or more?

- I think people know that there has always been partisan pressure to make elections more favorable one way or another.

You can go back to the North Carolina election of 1898 and the massacre in Wilmington to see just how bad it can get, that it can lead to murder.

But in this case, I think the constitutional question of how much power and authority the federal government should have has a really interesting overlap with the public's interest in impartiality because everybody thinks the Postal Service should be neutral.

We all agree the Postal Service should deliver your letter and your letter on the same amount of time.

You shouldn't be able to get extra service unless you pay for it, right?

But in this case, the Trump administration is trying to insert electioneering into the Postal Service and every election administration in the country has been built on the assumption that the Postal Service is neutral and I think that's what people want the Postal Service to be.

- Bill, your take on that, the Postal Service getting into, well, they would have to handle mail-in ballots.

It's a mail-in ballot.

- Yeah, I don't think the people's lack of trust is with the Postal Service.

I think the lack of trust is with the partisanship that's being injected into all of this.

And I think, you know, too often when we talk about this issue right now, we sort of talk about this like this is a standard run-of-the-mill president where this is coming from.

And we ignore the fact that, and I know this is a show about state matters, but this is a national matter that is really about to impact the state.

And so this is a president who has repeated lies about voting security and about the outcomes of his own elections that have been debunked widely and on a bipartisan basis.

So this is where that rule originates from.

And I think most of the people who are on the street, the credibility issue for them is not about voter integrity.

The credibility is about where this is coming from.

And there are a lot of questions about why we should believe that there's good motivations here.

- News and Observer reporters, Kyle Ingram and David Raynor.

Tip of the hat to you, tracked voting access for the 2026 midterm elections recently, there was a promise made out of the state auditor's office that voting access would actually be increased in time for this midterms.

The reporters say North Carolina's 100 counties have increased voting sites and voting hours compared to the 2022 midterm elections.

Statewide, there are nine more voting sites this election.

Voting hours will increase by 1300 hours.

And this comes after reductions in Sunday voting and the rejection of some college campus voting sites with those rejections and that downsizing of Sunday got everyone's attention in the mass media, if you will.

But Dallas Woodhouse promised it and Dallas has stepped aside, found their liaison.

And he says, 'I want my flowers, they kept their promise.'

- You know, I think, you know, there's the quantity of voting sites and then there's the talk about quality of the voting sites as well that needs to be a part of this.

Any, you know, any congratulations should go to increasing access, but tell the students in North Carolina A&T that access is greater for them or the students at Western Carolina or the folks living out in Columbus or Lenoir County.

There's reason to believe that in some places it's not as easy to vote as it should be.

And so, you know, and then also you've got the questions in there about Dallas, who I know Dallas, I get along just fine with Dallas, but for a lot of people, they looked at the former head of the North Carolina GOP in an election integrity role and it made them suspicious, you know.

And so, you know, where we go from here is anybody's guess, but I think a lot of people who are sitting at home are probably thinking, can we just have an election where we don't change the rules 10 minutes before we go vote or something like that?

Because it's adding some chaos into a process that people wanna feel secure in.

- Jeff, there's a narrative and then there's the truth.

Factually, if there are nine more voting sites and 1,300 more voting hours, was that a promise kept?

- Yeah, I think so.

On paper, you certainly have the access and we've got an extended time period in North Carolina for early voting and absentee voting.

I don't think access is truly an issue with the extended time period that we have.

We have the more sites, we have the more voting hours and you do have this kind of pattern where we have rules changing right on the eve of elections all the time in North Carolina.

It feels like this is part of the process for election season in North Carolina with either election rules or absentee ballot and signature requirements or whether or not you're gonna have the sites open.

But I think that North Carolinians at large take advantage of all the early voting opportunities that they have, that there's plenty of them.

I think we'll have a successful election with this amount of voting opportunity.

- Theresa, why does it take until August, September before an election for all?

A whole show, this whole show practically is discussing election law changes and lawsuits to stop the changes.

- Well, I don't think this is every election year.

I think it's this election year in particular.

One thing the Trump administration has become extraordinarily focused on is they know that they're going to lose some seats, right?

They know that he is the most unpopular president we have had in decades and that it's, you know, off-year elections are usually bad for the party in power.

So they know that's gonna be what's gonna happen and they're just thinking about, well, what can we tweak in order to give us a fighting chance and basically lose less seats than we would otherwise.

So I believe a lot of this chaos is just intentional to change, you know, even the slightest number of votes that gets changed could change the outcome in some races that make a difference.

- Graig, is there a difference, even if the state offers more voting hours and slightly more locations, can it change the effect on the voting population by just saying, no, A&T, you can't have one.

No, Western Carolina, you can't have a place either.

- Of course it can.

I've got six kids.

If I spend five more hours this week on my kids than I spent last week, I would feel great about it.

But if I spent all of it on one of the six kids 'cause I went to two of his soccer games, the rest of the kids are gonna say, hey, dad, that's not fair.

And in elections, we expect you to be fair to everybody.

And in this case, they're clearly doing the change to target black communities because they are trying to see if they can get away with it after the Kalei decision that struck the Voting Rights Act down.

And so they're trying to exert their power and see what they can get away with.

- A process is underway that will determine if Raleigh-based hospital system, Wake Med, will be able to merge with Charlotte HealthCare system, Atrium.

Wake Med's executive team will say publicly their system needs to integrate with Atrium to stay competitive with Duke and UNC Health Systems.

Wake Med says it expects to create over 3,000 jobs after a potential merger.

This week, WRAL News reported that Wake Med has a $919 million expansion plan on the table right now, including 90 new hospital beds for Wake County.

Wake County's commissioners would approve any merger, but local voters, Graig, have demanded a slowdown of the process.

Political partisans say no, and a lot of people say, what is going on?

So what is going on?

- Right off the top, I have to say that the Justice Center is opposed to this, but I think it's relevant to understanding what's happening here.

You have a phenomenal local hospital.

Wake Med, a high-performing hospital, lots of care for indigent people, low rates of medical debt, high quality of care, everything you want, and now there's this proposed merger or takeover with Atrium, this massive national chain.

And I think where the voters are frustrated here is similar to where they're frustrated on data centers and flock cameras, where they're saying, 'These corporations keep telling us 'that we have to accept more of them in our lives 'and that our prices have to go up for hospitals 'and healthcare and energy and all these things, 'and we're sick of being told by corporations 'that the prices have to go up.

'We need elected officials to stand in the way of that.

'We know that competition keeps healthcare costs down, 'and so we don't want more hospital mergers 'because this consolidation,' and we've seen it in Wake, or Winston-Salem, we've seen it in Asheville, we've seen it in Wilmington already, consolidation of the hospitals drives up costs and drives customer care down, and we don't want that in our health system.

- Theresa, I don't think you represent Wake Med or Atrium, but what is the case here for a merger?

I can understand Duke Hospital and UNC, they are tough competitors in a marketplace where we need hospitals, so what am I missing?

- Well, so first of all, calling Atrium and Wake Med a merger is like saying McDonald's and Cookout is a merger.

It's not, right?

- It's an aborption.

- Oh no, I mean, they're gonna own Wake Med, right?

Atrium does not make decisions down in Southeast Raleigh like Wake Med currently does.

Atrium makes decisions in Charlotte for the entire country.

They are a huge corporation.

So let's at least be clear about what's happening.

It is a takeover, and I agree with you.

My fear is that Wake Med was designed as a county hospital to provide certain services for the people of Wake County and its surrounding areas, and it's turned out to be a phenomenal healthcare provider.

And is this what's the best result for the citizens in this area?

I don't think so.

I think that some of our local competitors, such as Duke and UNC, that would be interested in actually merging with Wake Med would end up being better for the citizens.

- But Wake Med, Billy, says they need this, that they're seeing the landscape in this area, or the triangle area, if you will.

They say they need it.

- That might be the case.

It might help their bottom line.

But I don't think that, to echo what Graig and Theresa were saying, the normal person sitting at home just wants to know, 'Is this gonna make my life easier?

'Am I gonna be able to go to a doctor 'and not see the prices skyrocket through the roof?'

As we have seen in so many instances where there's no competition.

And so for the folks who are served by Wake Med and have been happy with their care, this can't be good news to them.

It's hard to imagine that it would be good news.

So I think that you will see people on both sides of the political aisle who will question whether this is good for North Carolina.

- Very rare one-sided panel here, but Billy, they say you have more access to a corporation, has more access to cancer care and neurology and all the things that we as patients possibly would not get otherwise.

- I think, again, I think it's about can they actually afford to go see a doctor?

I think the average North Carolinian is struggling to go see a doctor.

So that's the thing that they're thinking about all the time and that may be a benefit for the folks in the community, but the cost is just such a dilemma.

- Jeff, there are no taxpayer dollars involved in this, even though the Wake County Commission would decide on being, I guess, bought out or merged, whichever, take your terminology.

But in this state, you can't expand medical facilities due to state law, but you can without any state intervention in theory, consolidate.

- Yeah, yeah, I think the undercurrent to all this agreement here is that competition would be good in the healthcare space and that North Carolinians and Americans at large are facing healthcare price inflation to such a degree that it is number one or two on their list of financial concerns.

So the undercurrent for me is this legal regime of certificate of need loss that actually restricts competition.

So if we open that up, we wouldn't have this problem.

People would have more options to be able to shop around and find that better healthcare solution for themselves.

- The John Locke Foundation represented on this show and certificate of need, if I should mention that word, people like you come out of the woodwork.

North Carolina is set to receive $415 million, guaranteed as part of a nationwide settlement with Facebook's corporate owner, Meta.

The payments will be made over 10 years and could reach $645 million if the US states can implement the industry-wide safeguards that Meta agrees to implement.

Attorney General Jeff Jackson says it's the largest big tech settlement in US history.

Governor Stein says he'll be asking Republican legislative leaders to fund more teen mental health services.

That's a lot of money, Theresa.

- It is.

And there's so much fun things to talk about in this settlement.

I think the first thing you need to think about is, all right, Meta's gonna pay 12 plus billion dollars because they don't wanna go to actual litigation.

So what really is hidden that would have come out in a trial that they don't want anybody to see?

That's the first thing.

The second thing is, the money aside, you guys, the safeguards that they are forced to put in place, for example, your six children, if they're under a certain age, they can only spend two hours before they're kicked off the platform.

And then breaks are mandated every so often.

And they can't be online during school hours, 8 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

Those are all great things that I think are gonna help parents do a better job at parenting, right?

Thirdly, you guys, the amount of money is incredible.

And there are going to be, I think, a lot of great things that the legislature will end up providing money for that they would not have been otherwise.

And yes, mental health for school-age children is an incredible need right now.

But then the other kicker is, and this is the fourth fun part about this, is that the deal they've made with the money, why it could be more money, is that Meta has said, well, if our competitors TikTok and YouTube, which is Google, do the same thing as we're doing, we'll give you $5 billion more to share, right?

So they attached the carrot to the stick so that they're gonna try and force states to do something, which is then the fifth problem of having a state-by-state patchwork.

- Jeff, though, this is the open market, a private company.

Parents are addicted, if you will, to all the social media, and the kids are slicker than the parents at getting around all these firewalls.

My daughter was whipping me and my wife early on, we didn't know it.

Why should Meta have to pay a penalty?

Is this like a modern-day cigarette-type tobacco settlement?

- Yeah.

- It's addictive and-- - A lot of these settlements, I mean, these are goodwills, and for companies that are as flush as the big tech companies in the United States, this is a business decision.

It's much easier to settle and get this money, get programs in place, and maybe get their competitors on a similar line to where they can play in the same playing field.

But I think the real solutions to these, even to the mental health issues and the abuses of social media that too much of us engage in, is really a cultural thing that we're gonna have to approach, and it's not gonna be solved necessarily through all of these kind of legal moves.

And it's the harder problem of actually having to look inward a lot of the times and actually approach these things.

And then the market will respond to those things.

The companies will go where the value is, and if we kind of show them what our value signals are, I think that'll help a lot.

- Billy, I will say this about the mental health issue with teenagers, that does seem to have very much bipartisan appeal.

They set down the swords, and it seems like North Carolina comes together on that.

- The one thing it seems like everyone can agree on is we're kind of mad at social media, but we also can't get off it.

It's kind of like the idea of an addiction.

It encapsulates it really well.

I'll say this, though, and this is important to say, most of the kids aren't on Meta and Facebook.

They're on TikTok, and they're on YouTube and other platforms.

So this is just scratching the surface of this issue, and it's not even touching the issue of disinformation spread as well.

So there's a lot more to this.

- Graig, will it work in practice, all these safeguards?

Parents still have to parent, I would think.

And you've got lots of practice.

- Yep, we were telling our 11-year-old about this last night and she said, 'Well, it won't matter to me.

'I already have a few fake accounts where I'm over 18.'

And it's like, oh, she beats.

Thanks for telling me, kid.

We're gonna have to work on this.

But the truth is, this is like so many other things where as a parent, you know, I can get my kid to do difficult things if there are other parents working to get their kids to do it with me.

And when you are doing that, even as a group of parents, you're trying to do it against a corporation that can afford to put as much money into this as Meta is about to, it's really hard to fight that corporation.

But as Jeff said, if we can all do this together, parents will be happier and the kids will be more mentally healthy.

- Theresa, a great point.

If the other companies come along, we'll pay you more.

Is that paying legislators and attorneys general to simply go after the other big titans of tech?

- Oh, no, that's why I called it the carrot with the stick because they're saying, 'Oh, hey, legislators in every single state, you'll get even more money, in our case, $200 million more money if they pass laws that apply this.'

So we'll see.

- And I enjoy your videos you make, Billy.

I do enjoy some social media.

I know you do too, but thank you so much for watching State Lines this week.

Thank you, Graig, for coming back on the show.

Email your opinions to us.

I know you have them about elections, about Facebook.

I'll share it with the crowd.

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Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

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