North Carolina House Republicans on Tuesday advanced a sweeping elections and voting bill as protesters descended on the legislature, accusing lawmakers of suppressing the vote.

The 36-page bill includes a grab bag of conservative policies, including banning election officials from encouraging voter turnout, banning ranked-choice voting statewide, and empowering the Republican state auditor to investigate election conduct in counties of his choice.

Republicans in the House Elections Committee advanced the bill, House Bill 958, Tuesday morning without taking public comment, prompting chants of “shame” from the dozens who showed up in opposition. It now heads to the House Rules Committee, which will meet at 2:30 p.m.

Rep. Hugh Blackwell, the bill’s sponsor, said he expected the bill would go the House floor on Wednesday, but that it was a “work in progress” that would likely be amended.

“We’re not trying to put up obstacles, so much as to do what we can to improve integrity of the voting process,” he said.

Democrats in Tuesday’s committee hearing roundly rejected the bill, except for Rep. Shelly Willingham, a moderate who lost his primary election in March. If Democratic Gov. Josh Stein were to ultimately veto HB 958, House Republicans would only need to convince one Democrat to vote with them in order to override the veto.

What is House Bill 958?

HB 958 combines a massive suite of largely unrelated election provisions, some of which appear motivated by former Republican Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s unsuccessful effort to overturn his 2024 election loss.

These include restricting the voting rights of so-called “Never Residents” which are the adult children of North Carolinians who were born abroad and never established residency in the state. The bill would also require overseas voters to submit a photocopy of their identification with their absentee ballot.

Republicans introduced the first version of HB 958 last year, which included many of the same provisions. The bill never made it to a floor vote, though, and laid dormant until lawmakers released a new version late last week.

One of the new provisions would empower State Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican, to conduct post-election audits in counties of his choice — a proposal critics say could lead to political decisions.

“The auditor is a partisan-elected office, he is a partisan actor,” Rep. Phil Rubin, a Wake County Democrat, said. “... He can now say, after an election, ‘My candidate didn’t do well in this district,’ or he could say, ‘I personally didn’t do well in this county’ and he can pick that county for an audit afterward.”

He also noted that Boliek has personally campaigned for candidates in the past, most recently, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, who lost his primary election in March.

Hayes, speaking to reporters after the hearing, said he did not have any concerns about Boliek’s impartiality and noted that the bill specifies that his post-election audits could not be used to challenge the final results of an election.

Other provisions included in HB 958 include:

—Banning paid signature gathering for political petitions

—Slightly extending the deadline for counting absentee and provisional ballots

—Expanding the State Board of Elections’ ability to hire private lawyers for legal disputes and making those communications exempt from public records laws

—Clarifying that an early or absentee vote must be thrown out if the voter dies before Election Day

—Reducing some campaign finance reporting requirements

—Requiring candidates to have been registered with a political party for a full year to run in that party’s primary

Protesters swarm legislature

While dozens of protesters entered the legislative building in advance of the bill’s hearing, another group gathered outside, joined by state Democratic Chair Anderson Clayton, to hold a press conference opposing the bill.

Clayton told reporters that Republican lawmakers should be more focused on passing the state’s nearly one-year overdue comprehensive budget rather than altering elections law.

“This legislature is so afraid of the voters that they represent right now that they would rather do something like this than actually see how they feel about the policies that they’re pushing through in Raleigh…(and) face that ballot box in November,” she said.

Clayton mentioned recent reports of State Board of Elections members being pressured to vote against a polling site at Western Carolina University, calling it “hyper polarization.”

“North Carolinians want enfranchisement in our ballot box access, not disenfranchisement, which we continuously see out of this building here behind me,” Clayton told The News & Observer.

Clayton was joined by Mondale Robinson, mayor of Enfield, a town in Halifax County. Robinson said that this bill would complicate voting for the residents of his rural, majority Black town, who already struggle to make it to the polls because of work obligations.

Robinson told The N&O that the bill’s restrictions on local boards of elections encouraging voter turnout could jeopardize Halifax County’s progress at the polls. Since Robinson has been in office, he said, the county has seen significant increases to youth voter turnout.

“I think for me, we’re not hoping that Republicans get a conscience today. What we are doing, though, we’re going to sound the alarm,” Robinson told The N&O. “We’re going to continue to sound the law as a Democratic Party of North Carolina, as concerned people across the state. We’re obligated to fight even when we are in the minority.”

Clayton also spoke at length about former Rep. Sarah Stevens, a Republican lawmaker representing Surry and Wilkes counties, who recently announced her resignation to focus on her campaign for state Supreme Court against Associate Justice Anita Earls.

“Few people have done as much as she has to restrict the right to vote and predetermine the outcomes of elections in North Carolina,” Clayton said.

Stevens chairs the House Election Committee, but she did not show up to the hearing on the HB 958. Her resignation is effective Tuesday at noon.

NC’s auditor has election oversight powers

Tuesday’s bill comes just over a year after Republicans took control of North Carolina’s state and local election boards due to controversial legislation passed in the final days of their veto-proof supermajority in the legislature.

Republican lawmakers stripped Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of his appointments to these boards and transferred them to State Auditor Dave Boliek, making him the only auditor in the country with election oversight powers.

When the law took effect in May of last year, Boliek promptly appointed a Republican majority to the State Board of Elections, a move which led to the ousting of the board’s longtime executive director, Karen Brinson Bell. The new Republican majority replaced her with Hayes, a lawyer who previously worked for House Speaker Destin Hall and his predecessor, Tim Moore.

©2026 The News & Observer. Visit at newsobserver.com. Distributed at Tribune Content Agency, LLC.