Rules on immigrants voting, voter photo identification and income tax limits are all already in the North Carolina constitution. But new amendments tweaking the rules could be in play for the 2024 elections.
Posted 2024-06-18T22:07:48+00:00 - Updated 2024-06-19T04:33:56+00:00
North Carolina voters this fall could be asked to make multiple changes to the state constitution, a top state lawmaker said Tuesday.
Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said Republican legislative leaders have discussed a number of possible constitutional amendments. There are three ideas he favors, he said, with the caveat that the exact details aren't yet finished and ready to be made public, for at least two of the proposals.
But with Berger voicing plans to adjourn the legislative session at the end of this month, details could soon become public as lawmakers rush to approve the amendments in the next week or two.
One is the citizens-only voting amendment that House Speaker Tim Moore has also pushed in his chamber. The state constitution already says only U.S. citizens can vote; this amendment would keep that same rule but with slightly different wording.
Critics say it's a ploy by Republicans to trick people into thinking immigrants are allowed to vote in North Carolina, thereby using the amendment to boost conservative voter turnout rates in a presidential election year when enthusiasm could be lagging for the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. Immigration is among the top issues for Republican voters.
Supporters say that even though the amendment wouldn't change anything, it's necessary to show support for the general idea that non-citizens should remain unable to vote.
The other two less fully formed ideas for new amendments, which Berger mentioned Tuesday, sound as if they could be stricter versions of two amendments voters approved in 2018 — one setting rules for voters to show photo identification, and the other capping the state's maximum possible income tax rate.
The personal income tax rate is 4.5%. It's set to drop to 3.99% by 2026. The corporate income tax rate will gradually decrease to 0% by 2030 — a hallmark achievement of Republican politicians in North Carolina who have long promised to lower taxes.
The state constitution used to cap the maximum possible tax rate at 10%, and the 2018 amendment lowered that to 7%. Berger said he'd like to see another amendment this year lowering the cap even further, but that the exact number is still being debated in private GOP meetings.
Berger offered few details on how they might propose changing the voter identification rules, saying that there were words in the constitution that might be modified.
The current versions of the income tax and voter ID amendments are being litigated in state court, challenged as unconstitutional. And the challengers won at trial, with a Wake County judge endorsing their argument that Republican lawmakers lacked the legal legitimacy to put the constitutional amendments on the ballot at all in 2018.
A supermajority is required to put amendments on the ballot, and Republicans had a supermajority at the time only because of political district maps that were later struck down as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, the court found. Since the supermajority itself was unconstitutional, the court ruled, its members lacked the legitimacy to propose constitutional amendments.
The case has since gone up to the state Supreme Court, and is now back at the trial court for a further examination of the evidence. Berger said Tuesday that if voters pass new versions of those amendments, it could potentially moot that lawsuit.
