- [Narrator] Legislative Republicans override a slew of gubernatorial vetoes, activating new state laws on elections, energy policy, and limiting the governor's powers.

This is "State Lines."

- [Narrator 2] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[uplifting music] ♪ - Hello again and welcome to "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, WUNC Radio's, Colin Campbell.

There you are, Colin.

- Hey [laughs].

- Senator Graig Meyer of Caswell, Orange, and Person Counties.

To his right, Senator Jim Perry of Beaufort, Craven, in Lenoir Counties.

In chair four, we gotta get you outta chair four.

I know you don't like sitting down on the far end of the table.

Wilmington's Morning News Radio host Nick Craig.

Well, I do think, gentlemen that we're running out of theme weeks, as always, seems to be one week's budget week and this week's, that week, this week's veto overrides week.

So we have a lot to talk about, right?

- Oh yeah.

- You wanna go first with this?

- Sure.

- We're gonna talk about the elections laws will likely be different.

Lawsuits are pending for the 2024 Primaries in general election, which will be next November.

Legislative Republicans use their week this week to override multiple gubernatorial vetoes, including elections legislation.

This is just part of everything that happened.

County elections boards will be politically balanced with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans.

Absentee ballots must be received by poll closing time on election day.

Those time extensions that were enjoyed in the past are now ended.

State Board of Elections will see a new politically balanced board selected, and if that board deadlocks on selecting new leadership, the legislators will step in and select leaders on their behalf.

Private donors would be banned and are banned from funding elections operations efforts, and the Democratic National Committee and others have filed lawsuits against certain provisions of this bill.

Colin, this is a TV show that talks for a half hour.

We could go two hours on elections, just start somewhere and dive deep.

- Yeah, I mean, I guess the big change in this that most voters will see is the grace period for mail-in ballots.

Right now, if you get it in the mailbox, have it postmarked on election day, and it shows up two or three days later, you're fine.

If it arrives within that three days, this elections bill that's now law changes that.

So there's no grace period.

So you really, if you're a procrastinator, you gotta time this out so that you understand how long the postal service takes.

Or maybe you just show up and bring it in person if you're doing a mail-in ballot at the last minute.

'Cause if it shows up the day after the election, even if you sent it the week before, ain't gonna count.

So there's a lot of worries about how many votes get thrown out in that process.

- Graig.

- There's an audacity in passing these changes to the election law because much of what what's included in these bills was rejected by voters in 2018 by over 60% of the voters saying no to Constitutional amendment that would've done some of these things.

But I think you're gonna hear a lot from me today about the audacity of the Republican leadership and trying to do things that have not been popular or have been disapproved before.

The other big thing that I would add that's on the plate with these election bills that Colin didn't touch on is the gridlock factor.

If you have election boards that are balanced equally between the two parties and they end up disagreeing on things and you can see a reversion to the minimum which would mean in some counties you might see only one early voting site, a minimum of early voting days.

And I believe that there's a fair number of things in the election bills that are intended to put restrictions on access to the ballot where I would rather see expanding access to the ballot.

- Senator Jim Perry.

- Senator Meyer mentioned we'd probably hear a lot from him today.

I'm accustomed to that being in the chamber with him.

I think some of those concerns are definitely overblown.

If we think about the state of New York, it's only a few years ago that they began early voting.

They all voted on one day, you know, it is possible, but a restriction to get a ballot in by a deadline.

We're all adults, we're accustomed to having deadlines and having things be due.

But I think the important part of that is that it provides some thought of elections being secure, elections being just, and when you have one party with more control or the ability to change something, that makes the other party feel like they're at a disadvantage.

So we want to find a way to make people have more confidence.

- Nick Craig, we can trust the system or we can trust the postal service with absentee ballots, among other things.

We'll move down the list.

I've got four or five things we'll touch on.

The balance in trusting the postal service to deliver by poll closing date versus safe elections versus the audacity of the Republicans to pass such appeal.

- Well, I think Colin made the point.

I mean, if you're a serial procrastinator, you might have to update your timelines a little bit, but I think we heard a lot of these same arguments when Georgia made similar election law changes three or four years ago, Stacey Abrams went around the state making, collecting tens of millions of dollars worth of donations.

And I pulled these stats from the Georgia Secretary of State website all time record turnout in the midterm election, record breaking midterm early voting turnout, and record-breaking absentee by mail cast in the last 2022 election.

Those were the same kind of claims we heard down in Georgia and those didn't pan out to be the case at all.

They had a record setting in the all Southeast.

They were the number one state for voter turnout this go-around.

So I don't know that there's anything to back up the claim that this is gonna restrict people to vote.

We haven't seen it in Georgia and they're very similar laws.

- I think what you saw in Georgia is you saw that Stacey Abrams groups and others that responded to those laws with having to put together massive mobilization efforts and try and make sure that people did mail in their absentee ballots on time, et cetera.

And I think that's likely what you'll see here in North Carolina.

Our elections next year obviously are gonna be hotly-contested.

You'll see a lot of money and effort going into making sure that whatever the restrictions are, there's ways to make sure people can vote.

- But obviously they can though, and that they prove that in Georgia that if there are different deadlines, if it can't come in three days, it has to come in the day before then, as the voter that's what you need to do and you need to get your ballot in on time.

- Colin, your take on this, it is an information campaign.

If these provisions all stick, they're not all sued and they stay until the primaries.

Do you think the public, the media can get the information promulgated across our society to say, hey, mail your absentee ballot in early.

- That's gonna be the challenge.

I mean, some of this will come from the State Board of Elections and there's a question around how much funding they get to educate voters about.

I mean, currently they're, they're trying to educate voters about voter ID being, in effect, this will be one more thing that has to be communicated to the public.

And certainly I think media and a lot of the advocacy groups like what Senator Meyer mentioned will also get in on the game.

And as far as trying to get people to know what they've gotta do, but, a lot of people don't tune into the minutia of this stuff.

Voting is a habit that you keep year to year and it's hard to break people out of their preferred method, their preferred timeline for when they cast their ballots.

- Senator Perry, some elections, bills, put a referendum out there and the voters are gonna pass it by 60% or they're gonna reject other provisions by 60%.

How closely do you feel voters follow this in the minutia as opposed to if they select a certain media outlet or a certain blog, or they have a certain political persuasion they're just going to agree with their side.

- I haven't seen a lot of mobility among those opinions in the past few years.

I think we've all seen people be a little more polarized.

I'm not sure how much ability we have to sway those opinions - Nick, do we need poll observers?

Do they need the ability to walk around and watch me vote, or at least look behind my back or listen in on what I'm telling?

I mean, 'cause that's part of this provision too.

People say poll observers, there'll be a presence, a greater presence.

- Sure and I mean, I think the question is, and you look at political polling across party lines.

Obviously, it's more prominent on the Republican side of the aisle, there's general distrust in elections.

But here in North Carolina, our largest voting block, one out of every four unaffiliated voters has questions about transparencies of elections.

And these are partisan poll observers.

There will be Democrat and Republican poll observers in every precinct across the state, and they'll have the ability to listen in on those conversations between a voter and an election official.

They're not gonna be telling you, who you need to vote for or why you should vote one way or the other.

They're just making sure there's some transparency in the system, which polling indicates is needed.

People don't trust the system right now, Kelly.

- I think that's human nature too.

People want to see behind the door that is closed, right?

So if you tell them they can't be there, and they can't observe, they assume something is going on that's nefarious.

- You just gotta make sure that they can't be too intrusive.

There is one strange double standard in the law which is that in North Carolina, you're prohibited from taking a photograph of your own ballot.

In general, I think strongly discouraged from taking photographs inside the polling place in general.

But the law gives the ability of the poll observers to take photographs of what's happening.

That's gonna create some tensions inside polling places if and when things don't stick to reasonable guidelines.

- Colin, I've voted a lot of elections, you know, and if there are poll observers there on a partisan basis, I don't know think I've ever seen that they've scoured over my shoulder to be honest.

I'm listening to Twitter and news reports to say, "You better watch out, they're gonna be over your shoulder listening."

- Yeah, I mean, I think they're there, but at least up until now have been fairly unobtrusive.

So the question around this law is, how much more movement do they get?

As I understand that this is not giving them carte blanche to come up behind you, look over your shoulder see who you're voting for, because it is supposed to be a private act.

It's a private ballot.

But there's certain questions, you know, what conversations would they overhear, you know, if you're having a discussion with the poll worker about what type of ballot you're requesting, particularly like a primary and you're unaffiliated.

Some of that, there's some gray areas in this that I think we'll kind of see only really get worked out when we actually go through an election with this as the law.

- And the last point I want to check, we'll move on from elections, maybe forever or at least till the next season.

Private money coming in to help with public government and elections are administration operations.

What's that all about Senator Meyer?

It's banned, and I guess Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook gave lots of money to Georgia and other places.

- In North Carolina, right?

So it's a reaction to having private money that was used to fund voter outreach and poll supplies and workers and et cetera in the last election.

If you're not gonna allow, and if you don't want that, then you have to make sure you adequately, fully fund election boards and make sure they have all the money that they can do what they need to do.

And I think there are election boards around the state that have expressed that they don't feel like they're adequately funded, whether it's from the state or from their counties.

So it's gonna be a challenge, to see, can we do everything we need?

- Is this a new thing in North Carolina?

Where billionaires, they wanna support elections and maybe government transparency but people look at them and say, "Hey, why are you putting this money in our precinct?"

- I think anytime you see change, regardless of a political party, everyone's antenna goes up and they want to know what's going on.

You know, the concept of fully fund elections or anything else, it's pretty nebulous, right?

Does fully fund mean that you have to give me everything I ask for, or it's inadequate?

So the standard is a tough one to establish, but I do think anytime you see new money coming in from someone who has whatever their political bent may be there's an assumption they're doing it for a reason.

So it's probably better not to have that.

- All right.

The Cooper administration is suing legislative Republican leaders after another veto override.

This one stripped the governor of appointment powers over many boards and commissions.

Senate bill five 12 reduces, seeks to which Governor Cooper but more importantly, future governors can appoint members, legislative leaders would appoint higher numbers to these boards.

This is really about executive versus legislative power.

Senator Perry, the Cooper administration, says restricting his office's appointment powers is blatantly unconstitutional.

And the Cooper team wants the court to halt the power transfer until Justices can decide.

Did McCrory have this issue too?

- McCrory had an issue, I wouldn't say it was this issue.

I think it comes down to what we learned in hopefully elementary or middle school about the three branches of government.

And we have legislative, we have judicial, but we don't have governor, right?

We have executive.

And our executive branch half of it, is not composed of the governor's office.

So, I think our constitution assigned those responsibilities of the executive branch, those elected positions for a reason.

It's well established that North Carolina had a weaker executive branch, 'cause that's what our founders wanted.

That's what the writers of our constitution wanted.

So I don't think it is the same thing.

I think they are following more of a federal idea of maybe, is it unitary executive theory where one person controls every aspect of the federal branch?

Well, that's not true here in North Carolina and in our state government.

So the majority of those appointments that have been changed, are just moved around within the executive branch.

They're not pulled into the general assembly.

The executive branch still maintains the majority of the appointments on, I think all but maybe two.

And those were areas that were created, not by the Constitution, but by the General assembly.

We created, we have the ability to change it.

- How have North Carolinians not been served well?

'Cause you changed the law, so obviously you saw a problem, or at least your caucus did.

How have we not been served by having a governor with these greater appointment powers as opposed to after this veto?

- I think the idea we have had or the conversations we've had is that, is it about balance and differing perspectives on there?

And we think that's what you get in represented form of government.

I don't know that you can expect to see that regardless of who's in the governor's mansion.

If one party controls every aspect of it.

- [Moderator] Yeah, Senator Meyer.

- I think Senator Perry just tacitly acknowledged that this may not be about Governor Cooper but it could be about with Trevor party holds.

The governorship after the next election and the legislature saying, we want power no matter which party controls the governor's name.

- Are you saying Governor Robinson maybe or are you saying?

- It could be as much about Governor Robinson or Governor Stein or Governor Morgan or whoever it is that that's the governor, 'cause this isn't about who's in office right now.

These powers are gonna be rolled out over the next couple years.

Again, this is an example though of where the Republican legislative majority is doing something that they have been told that they can't do previously in three previous Supreme Court cases, one under Governor McCrory, as you mentioned, two under Governor Cooper.

What's being done in this bill has been said, you can't do this, this is unconstitutional.

But if you dive deep into those rulings, what you'll see is that Chief Justice Newby wrote the dissent on two of those and what's in the current legislation comports very closely to what Chief Justice Newby's dissent is.

So this is, in my opinion, the Republican legislative leadership saying we have a different court now, let's try and do what we've been told we can't do before, because we think the judges will rule differently this time.

- Colin, you see both of these gentlemen every day.

Parse what they both said and give us the report on this issue, 'cause it's not the most glamorous topic and it's not the most interesting compared to other things that have happened in the world this week.

- Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it's hard to get people excited about what the Utilities Commission or the State Board of Transportation does day to day.

And a lot of what they do day to day isn't necessarily that partisan.

What this to me looks like is just a shift more towards the legislature being the more dominant of the three branches of government in the state.

I talked to a political scientist recently who said that North Carolina has one of the weakest governors in the state before this happened.

This will continue a trend in that direction.

Certainly the general politics around this is we're much more likely to have governor's office switch parties in an election than we are at the legislature at this point.

Just the way the districts are drawn, it's a whole lot harder for Republicans to lose their majority in the legislature than it is for them to not get the governor's office.

- All right.

Nick, on this issue.

I don't really have an opinion.

You learn about it, it's complicated.

- [Nick] Sure.

- If you're a voter down in Wilmington or New Hanover County, why wouldn't you want your local legislator having a say over a swath of appointments as opposed to a governor that you might see on television, or maybe he'll swing by for some sort of event, but you'll never get to talk to and that you certainly cannot call?

- You read my mind, Cal.

That was exactly the point I was going to make.

When you're looking at some of these appointments coming from the general assembly, the way our legislature is made up and as most other states are, it's people that live literally in your community.

Depending on how big of an area you live in, you can have down in New Hanover, there's three house reps in just one county.

Those are three individuals living in the second smallest geographic county in the state of North Carolina.

So bringing some of that back to those individuals versus a governor coming down for a photo op after a hurricane where they can say, hey, we did it, we're rebuilding after the storm, I think is pretty important, absolutely.

- Senator Meyer, last word to you.

You know, you could have a say over boards and appointments, so it gives you power.

- I mean, first I don't think that most people believe that the legislature is in charge of having a functioning government.

They do expect that the governor and other executive branch members are in charge.

And so they want the people who are in charge to be running these groups.

But secondly, to your point, it really is controlled by the legislative majority.

It's not that every member has an equal say so in the appointments.

- Okay.

Republicans enacted energy legislation this week over another gov.

See the thing, governor veto and it gets overridden.

First, state regulations will be relaxed.

That could encourage an extension of what's called the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

That's a natural gas line that would carry gas from West Virginia through Virginia into Central North Carolina.

It's about 300 miles.

Second, Republicans ratified some changes to clean energy definitions.

So, nuclear power would be labeled as clean.

That would, in theory, help Duke Energy's plans to build at least one modular nuclear power plant so that it can reach some carbon reduction goals.

Senator Meyer, here we go.

It's a few changes.

Energy is coming to North Carolina under this law, whether people like the type of energy or not.

- We had massive legislation, bipartisan legislation, probably the most significant bipartisan legislation that I've seen in my 10 years, just two years ago that said North Carolina is gonna move towards a carbon neutral future and set up the framework for how we were going to get off of fossil fuels and transition.

And at the same time, we've been making huge gains in building a clean energy industry.

This legislation is really surprising and striking to me, because it starts to peel back some of that monumental legislation.

It leaves in place a cap on solar leasing that the solar industry is pretty upset about, because I feel like it makes it really hard for them to make investments here.

They're gonna take their money elsewhere.

It's gonna be harder for us to meet those emissions reduction goals.

It makes it easier to expand the natural gas pipelines that you're talking about, which would keep us on fossil fuels.

And so there's a lot of reasons to be concerned about this, especially after that big monumental deal we had just a couple years ago.

A lot of it is in the weeds for voters, but bottom line, we can add nuclear when it's cost affordable.

I think you've seen huge growth in the number of people that support nuclear, including even on the side of environmental advocates.

But in the short run, before you get to the place where you have affordable nuclear, the ability to stand up solar and wind energy is gonna be our cheapest and this is gonna make it harder.

- What about the end of coal in North Carolina as a source of energy production?

- I mean, we don't generate a lot of coal, but we burn coal and we are on a path to eliminate much of the burning of coal that's in North Carolina.

The question is what's the replacement fuel?

And if you replace it with the Mountain Valley Pipeline and natural gas, you're just transitioning to another expensive fossil fuel when there's the chance to do extremely inexpensive fuels from solar, wind, et cetera and maybe down the road, nuclear.

- Well, Senator Perry, you're positioned on a pipeline and on, well to his point, solar leases, maybe some restrictions there, nuclear.

- Yeah, sure.

So if we could have a pipeline coming into Eastern North Carolina today, it would be game changing for us.

It is something that our farmers desperately need.

We were hoping to get it a few years ago, but we had more of a scandal around a pipeline opportunity and that didn't happen.

We would welcome every energy source that we could.

If the Utilities Commission follows the law as established in 951, they would only establish nuclear if it was the least cost alternative, to Senator Meyer's point.

So, as long as we have that principle of least cost alternative in there, I don't know why anyone would be afraid of any of the modalities.

- Nick.

- Wind and solar are not incredibly cheap.

They are incredibly damaging to the environment, which is what we're supposed to be doing with all of this stuff.

You're mining rare Earth minerals in third world countries with slave and child labor, they're not cheap, they only work about 40% of the time.

There's the big debate now going on over offshore wind, which is killing whales all up and down the eastern seaboard.

These are forms of energy that I think will get there in time, but we're not there yet.

We've got a massive GE energy plant in southeastern North Carolina that's building these modular nuclear reactors.

We're not talking about the nuclear reactors of the 70s, that you saw in movies like the "China Syndrome."

That's not what we're talking about here.

If we're serious about carbon reduction, we need to be looking at nuclear and stop shoehorning energy that is not the most affordable and not the most effective.

- Kelly, there's a little bit that Nick said that I just think is factually wrong, I mean, per kilowatt hour, solar and wind are cheaper than any other available source right now.

And I don't believe that there's evidence that there's massive killing of whales from wind energy.

And I think it's important to point out, to Senator Perry's point about the need of Eastern North Carolina for reliable energy and good jobs that come with it.

That if we can stand up, not just offshore wind production, but the ability to produce the towers and everything and the lines that conduct that electricity, it could be a huge economic development opportunity for Eastern North Carolina.

- Can you be pro-nuclear?

Hope I said that right?

- Easy for you to say.

- Right, can you be pro-nuclear and pro-solar and pro-wind?

Is it possible to have it all?

- Yeah.

- Because it seems like there's this either or with this debate.

- That's what it's traditionally been.

You're either for solar or wind, or you're for nuclear.

And I think all of them can work together.

But that doesn't seem like the conversation is honest about it, nuclear.

- Nuclear.

- Nuclear.

- I think those of us who are advocating for get moving off of fossil fuels do believe that all three of those other sources are possible.

I mean, it used to be that the environmental movement was among the strongest opponents to nuclear.

And there still are people who, particularly for environmental conservation reasons, do really not want to see more nuclear.

But most folks who are motivated more by carbon emissions and trying to get the climate changing under control have now started to favor nuclear.

- Most people I know are in favor of lower energy bills.

Are we gonna have lower costs if we go say, away from even natural gas toward the newer model, the modular nuclear and the solar and the wind power column?

I mean, really it's about bills.

Monthly bills in a challenging economic environment.

- And that's the argument you heard from supporters of this bill.

And I think from Duke Energy as well.

That they're looking at the cost scenarios and thinking that may be the way to go.

I think there's a lot of uncertainty about electricity generation and the cost associated with it.

We won't really know for sure what the impact of any of these different scenarios is on the actual monthly bills that we pay pay, until a lot of these shifts take place.

- Senator Perry is this, we're looking 5, 10, 15 years out?

We're looking middle of this decade for some of these innovations.

- So I think in some ways we've tried to move too quickly in front of the demand curve.

And when you do that, all you do is drive costs through the roof.

We have to continue to think about dependability, as Senator Meyer mentioned.

We have to think about the impact on the grid and grid upgrades.

A lot of times we look at cost just in a vacuum and we're not thinking about other costs associated with that.

So we've gotta be mindful of all of those things and do what's in the best interest of North Carolina as a whole, not in some special interest.

- I have about 30 seconds for each of you just to close this show out.

Let's, since we're winding down what we consider the long session, we'll move into redistricting, a whole different animal.

Nick, size up this for the Republican leadership, for the Democrats on how they've responded to this General Assembly 2023.

- I think the Republican General Assembly showed something that maybe the federal government could learn from.

You can increase spending.

We had the largest ever state budget in North Carolina history, and at the same time, reducing income and personal income taxes.

You can do both, they can exist in the same sphere.

You have to be fiscally responsible with your money.

- Senator Perry.

- Controlling the growth of spending is the key to success for any business or any state.

You can easily outstrip your revenues and outpace those revenue sources.

I think you'll continue to see efforts by this General Assembly to make sure that we don't grow recklessly in our spending.

And that we reduce taxes whenever that opportunity's available.

- Senator Meyer.

- It's a little scary though, that the budget that was passed by this General Assembly, puts us in a structural deficit just five to six years down the road.

And what happens when we have population growth and the needs continue to move on for what we need for repairing our schools and taking care of our aging population.

And if you don't have enough revenue, then people don't get what they think they deserve from the taxes that they do pay.

- I've got to rebut that.

- All right.

- We've heard those dire straits comments before when we've seen forecast in the past, they've never come to be, we've always collected more.

If you look over the last 10 years.

You can't use a static model for forecasting.

As revenue grows, as interest rates go up, as people move in, it all changes.

- We've never passed a budget that projected a structural deficit.

- All right, that's our show, sorry, Colin.

They debated there at the end.

- Oh, it's okay.

- Thanks for watching us, folks.

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

I'll read every email and reply to some of them.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for watching, we'll see you next week.

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