Even though Trump narrowly won North Carolina, his supporters continued to amplify the Big Lie, discredit the process, spread conspiracy theories, and challenge the results in other states. Despite lacking evidence to support their allegations, they are poised to repeat unfounded claims of election fraud in 2024.
- Before Election Day 2020, the Trump campaign and the North Carolina GOP (NCGOP) challenged the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) decision to extend the date for accepting mail-in ballots to November 12, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. Both the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court ruled against overriding the board’s decision.
- In response to rampant “mis- and disinformation about the 2020 general election” prior to Election Day, the bipartisan State Board of Elections published Combating Misinformation.
- After the outcome of the presidential election was initially too close to call in North Carolina, election officials confirmed on November 13, 2020, that Trump beat Biden by 74,481 votes (1.3%).
- Exit polls conducted for ABC News on Election Day showed that 87% of voters in North Carolina said they were somewhat or very confident that votes would be counted fairly in their state.
- In response to conspiracy theories and questions about whether North Carolina would conduct a “forensic audit” of its 2020 general election or allow random voting machines to be opened “to see if they contain modems,” the NCSBE and all 100 county boards of elections conducted audits of the results and concluded that “statewide, the… machine counts of ballots were accurate.”
- On November 24, 2020, the NCSBE certified the votes of the more than 5.5 million voters (75% of registered voters) who cast ballots in North Carolina.
- Seven members of the North Carolina congressional delegation voted to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021. Representative Patrick McHenry (R–NC–10), who is not seeking reelection in 2024, was the only Republican representative from North Carolina who voted to certify President Biden’s win of the election.
- Donnie Loftis participated in the march to the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and was subsequently appointed by the NCGOP to the state House of Representatives in November 2021. According to WRAL News, he commented in a now-deleted Facebook post that he “got gassed three times and was at the entrance when they breached the door.”
- In April 2023, Republicans gained a narrow supermajority in North Carolina’s General Assembly after a state legislator switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. This enabled Republicans to pass SB 747, a huge package of election laws inspired in part by election denier Cleta Mitchell—who runs the Conservative Partnership Institute’s so-called Election Integrity Network and advised local GOP legislators in drafting the bills—and overturn vetoes from Governor Roy Cooper (D). Mother Jones called the move a “massive power grab to seize control of elections.”
- One of the new laws, titled “No Partisan Advantage in Elections,” eliminated the governor’s power to appoint members of the bipartisan NCSBE and gave it to legislative leaders instead. Another, also passed after the legislature overrode the governor’s veto, eliminated ballot drop boxes and ended a three-day grace period for absentee ballots that had been postmarked by Election Day, among other measures.
- In January 2024, Democrats scored a partial victory in their attempts to challenge SB 747, the sweeping voter suppression legislation passed by North Carolina’s GOP-controlled General Assembly in 2023. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder, a George W. Bush appointee, sided with the plaintiffs and blocked same-day registration restrictions, writing that the provision violates the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution and would result in legitimate ballots being discarded.
- In August 2024, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the NCGOP filed a lawsuit against the NCSBE for “ignoring the law and failing to clean up the voter rolls.” According to RNC Chairman Michael Whatley, “The NCSBE has chosen to blatantly ignore the law, undermine basic election safeguards, and neglect a fundamental principle of our election integrity.”
- In August 2024, former Senator Richard Burr (R–NC), who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, said in a TV interview that he would vote for Trump in November. “Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it,” Burr told Spectrum News about his decision to vote for Trump again. “I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. … It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.”