The North Carolina House passed a sweeping elections bill on Tuesday over the objections of Democrats, who argued that it could lead to eligible voters having their ballots thrown out.

The 37-page bill, House Bill 958, includes a wide variety of changes to election law, including creating new avenues to challenge ballots, requiring the Republican state auditor to conduct post-election audits and reducing some campaign finance reporting requirements.

Democrats uniformly voted against the bill, though Republicans had agreed to strip or amend some of the provisions that drew the most backlash.

“A bill that is a little less harmful than the first draft is still not one that we can support or should ever support,” Rep. Phil Rubin, a Wake County Democrat, said.

Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham, who voted against the bill in committee last week, voted in favor of it on Tuesday.

The House’s swing votes, which include unaffiliated Reps. Carla Cunningham and Nasif Majeed, all voted against HB 958. If their votes hold, Republicans would not have the numbers to override a veto from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein.

Furthermore, it’s unclear whether the Senate will even take up the bill. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Senate leader Phil Berger said he had not committed to do so.

On the House floor, Rep. Hugh Blackwell, the bill’s sponsor, cut out a much-debated section of the bill that would have restricted the ability of election officials to encourage voter turnout.

And last week in committee, Republicans amended a section that would have required Auditor Dave Boliek to conduct post-election audits in counties of his choice. Democrats had voiced concerns that he could single out areas where he or his party lost, so the bill was changed to specify that the counties should be chosen randomly.

But even with the change, Democrats questioned why more authority should be given to Boliek and pointed to a recent incident in which a Republican county election official said in a public meeting he had been pressured by the auditor’s office to reject an on-campus early voting site.

The bill empowers the executive director of the State Board of Elections to use federal databases to identify potentially ineligible voters and instruct the local county board of elections to challenge their registration. It also requires the state board to conduct a statewide post-election audit in search of ineligible ballots to challenge.

Rubin said that despite having secured an amendment to include some due process for challenged voters, the provision was still burdensome.

“I know that the process is often a punishment in itself,” he said. “... A working parent shouldn’t have to attend a hearing or hire a lawyer just to cast a ballot. In those situations, even when you win, you lose.”

House Speaker Destin Hall cut off debate after Rep. Zack Hawkins, a Durham Democrat, accused Republicans of pursuing the legislation to head off a damaging midterm election.

“I think we’re doing this because we see a wave coming,” he said. “And it’s maybe the opposite of the party that we are in, and we think we’re going to lose seats, and we want to make sure we can do all we can to take people off the margins — and that’s just not right.”

Hall said Hawkins had violated House rules by “calling into question the integrity of the members and the reason behind the bill.”

Other provisions in the bill include:

• Slightly extending the deadline for counting absentee and provisional ballots

• Expanding the State Board of Elections’ ability to hire private lawyers for legal disputes

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

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

• Allowing appeals of State Board of Elections decisions to be filed in any county a complainant resides in, rather than just Wake County

• Requiring the Division of Motor Vehicles to provide voters’ Social Security numbers to the State Board of Elections

• Clarifying that the group known as “Never Residents,” the adult children of North Carolina residents who are born abroad and have never resided in the state, are ineligible to vote in North Carolina

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