The North Carolina Leadership Forum (NCLF) hosted a series of meetings in 2023 and 2024 for election policy experts and public officials from across the political spectrum. The goal was to reach a broad consensus, or at least a mutual understanding, on one question: “What is the best way for North Carolina to conduct elections?”
The Program: Getting to Agreement or at Least Respectful Disagreement
The program was too extensive to cover completely in this post; the full 51-page final report is definitely worth reading. However, I will risk a bare-bones summary. NCLF hosted participants for one-and-a-day programs across four weekends in late 2023 and early 2024.
Each weekend had a different goal:
- First Weekend: “Identifying Areas of Concern, Things Held Valuable, and Basic Facts.”
- Second Weekend: “Prioritizing Values, Defining Chief Concerns, and Beginning to Identify Solutions.”
- Third Weekend: Going over the “Benefits and Tradeoffs” of various policy proposals.
- Fourth Weekend: “Understanding our Agreements and Disagreements.”
That last weekend was designed to find areas of consensus for specific policy proposals and, where that was not possible, better understand the basis for those disagreements. As the NCLF laid out in its conclusion, that better understanding was part of their goal:
For our democracy to thrive, policy leaders must be able to work together to create broadly acceptable solutions to our state’s greatest challenges. In 2023-24, a group of NC leaders addressed important concerns related to conducting elections in NC. They found some solutions they agreed on, some that were negotiable, and some about which they had very significant disagreements. In the process, participants came to understand what values, experiences, and perceptions lay under their disagreements, and they came to trust, respect, and perhaps even like each other.
Along those lines, here is a personal note on how the program went: I remember that the hackles were up during the first day of the forum. We were almost all ready to dig in around our positions and go down guns blazing. Frankly, we were a bit snippy. That changed over time due to the nature of the program, the guidance of the NCLF, and the goodwill of participants. We still largely stuck to our guns throughout the program, but the guns were not blazing. That allowed us to talk to each other rather than past each other.
So, What Is the Best Way for North Carolina to Conduct Elections?
So, other than some kumbaya moments, what did the NCLF election policy cohort produce?
We covered too much ground to explain every proposal in detail here (again, read the full report). Instead, I put copies of the report’s summary tables below. Each table includes proposals addressing five broad areas of concern regarding election policy.
Concern 1: There is a lack of trust in the integrity and transparency of the system
We agreed on the low-hanging fruit of “folks need to get educated.” There was less consensus on having a balanced State Board of Elections instead of the current 3-2 split in favor of the governor’s party (which is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit). Most of us objected to requiring election duty like jury duty is required (although I found the idea intriguing). Some counties in Nebraska have such an “election official pool” system.
Concern 2: It’s too hard to vote
I don’t think it is too hard to vote, and so opposed all those proposals. This is one area where compromise was hard to come by. The idea of mobile early-voting sites was interesting, but many participants expressed concerns about political considerations affecting when and where such mobile sites would be located.
Concern 3: Two-party “duopoly” system is failing
Many participants expressed frustration with our current two-party system. One proposal that many participants supported was moving away from our current runoff primary system, which is expensive and suffers from low turnout. There are several other ways to conduct elections, the one that generated the most interest was the “top-two primary,” in which candidates of all parties run together in the first round. If a candidate gets over 50% of the vote, he or she wins. Otherwise, the top two candidates advance to the second round regardless of party.
We largely agreed that making elections nonpartisan is a bad idea. In 2022, I wrote about how making judicial races nonpartisan suppressed votes. This was the only proposal that made it all the way through the process only to be soundly rejected by the group.
Concern 4: Gerrymandering prevents the results from being representative, pushing winners towards extremes
North Carolina politicos have strong feelings about redistricting, and how our state draws district lines has been the subject of numerous lawsuits. So, participants naturally had strong feelings about gerrymandering. However, there was no consensus on what to do about it. While a majority of participants supported creating an independent redistricting commission, a “strong minority” opposed it. Two other proposals, increasing the number of seats in the legislature and prioritizing competitive districts, also failed to garner strong support.
The John Locke Foundation tackled redistricting reform in a 2023 report: Limiting Gerrymandering in North Carolina.” That report had three main recommendations:
- Maintain current criteria from the North Carolina State Constitution (including equal population, contiguity, and minimizing county traversals)
- Not using partisan (voter registration or election results) or racial data, and do not consider incumbents’ home addresses (used to avoid “double-bunking” of incumbents)
- Focus on local communities, not statewide political concerns, including avoiding splitting precincts and municipalities and considering communities of interest
Those proposals can be implemented regardless of who draws the districts, but they are incompatible with emphasizing competitive districts (which requires the use of partisan data).
Concern 5: Running for and serving in public office is hard for the average person to do
It is not easy to run for public office. You spend time away from your family and work, lots of people hate you and what you stand for before you can even open your mouth, and you have to ask people for money to fund your campaign (something many people are loath to do). Given those problems, what could be done to make public service less burdensome and hopefully broaden who would consider running for office? The focus of our discussion was the General Assembly.
Participants honed in on two ways to address that problem. The first is to increase legislator pay from the current $13,951 to something more in keeping with the nearly full-time job that it has become.
The other popular option (in fact, perhaps the most popular policy proposal of the entire program) is to create defined session lengths with hard stops. Participants noted several benefits of such a change:
Upsides that were mentioned included improving legislators’ connection to their district, increasing efficiency and reducing waste, allowing legislators to manage their other jobs better, improving life for legislators’ families, and building trust with the average citizen. Some participants theorized that a limit on session length would increase the quality of legislators and allow more outside observers to be involved. They also saw advantages in predictability for participants and agencies funded by the state budget.
Those two proposals imply that there might be a third way: increasing pay and making legislative sessions a little shorter and more predictable.
There was strong disagreement over term limits for legislators.
So, What Was Gained by All This?
The NCLF report (again, read the whole thing) concluded with this:
Even in these politically fractious times, it is possible to bring together a widely diverse group of policy leaders and provide them with the opportunity to gain the will, skills, and relationships that will enable them to engage constructively with each other in the future. NCLF has provided, and should continue to provide, this opportunity to North Carolina’s leaders.
The election policy cohort of the North Carolina Leadership Forum produced several policy proposals that we may see introduced to the General Assembly over the next several sessions. It also armed leaders across the political spectrum with the means to better reach across the aisle to gain consensus for reform proposals and engage in policy debates with more light and less heat. There is no pretending that this one forum will overcome our current political acrimony and polarization, but it is a step in the right direction.
Cover photo from the North Carolina Leadership Forum’s 2024 report: Conversations on Elections
