Introduction
The primary funding sources for county election boards are county governments, with some funding from the General Assembly. The General Assembly also funds the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE), which uses those funds to regulating electioneering communications, among other things.
In recent years, some groups have claimed that the additional taxpayer funding of elections is still insufficient and sought to fund election boards privately. They include the notorious Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a progressive advocacy organization funded primarily by a donation from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. CTCL spent hundreds of millions of “Zuck bucks” on the 2020 election, including giving millions of dollars in grants to the SBE and 33 county boards in North Carolina. Those grants bypassed the normal legal channels for election administration funding.
In 2023, the General Assembly banned private funding for “conducting elections or employing individuals on a temporary basis.” Meanwhile, the CTCL spun off another organization, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, to influence local election boards toward progressive election policies through offering training programs and services paid for by public and private funds.
The SBE regulates election speech in North Carolina, particularly advertising by election campaigns, individuals, or interest groups. Members of the General Assembly from both major parties have called for more restrictions on political speech on the internet, especially regarding speech about those politicians. A digital electioneering bill proposed in 2019 would have required people or organizations putting a political ad on the internet to file a report with the SBE with exact details about the ad. No other form of paid political speech would be so burdened.
Ads on radio, TV, and newspapers are one-way channels. Content flows from producers to receivers. Political content on the internet is different, however. People are often simultaneously receivers and producers of content. On social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), political content quickly attracts negative comments from opponents alongside supportive comments. Despite the existence of internet sites that do not offer direct opportunities for opposing viewpoints, the internet is full of countervailing views.
Judges and judicial candidates face more restrictions than other political candidates on what they can say. The Judicial Standards Commission (JSC) strictly enforces the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct’s prohibition of conduct that may undermine “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Nevertheless, by extending this prohibition to speech outside the courtroom, the JSC effectively denies voters information about the courts and candidates that could help them make a more informed decision. For example, the JSC has twice investigated North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls for statements she made regarding what she sees as a lack of racial diversity among court employees and an “implicit bias” in how the Supreme Court treats female advocates. Regardless of the veracity of her claims, the JSC overstepped its bounds by trying to censure her for making them.
Key Facts
- While the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) provided private funding to election boards in both Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning counties in 2020, it gave only to 33 of the 100 counties in North Carolina. Voters in the 33 counties granted CTCL funds backed the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Cal Cunningham, 52.7% to 47.3%, while voters in the other 67 counties went for the Republican, Thom Tillis, 53.6% to 46.4%.
- In 2022, two North Carolina election boards, in Brunswick and Forsyth counties, were part of the initial cohort of counties nationwide participating in the CTCL spin-off, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence. The alliance’s model is to have election boards pay for membership using taxpayer funds and for the alliance to provide funds to those boards in the form of “scholarships” for participating in alliance programs. Both county election boards backed off from using the scholarships due to public pressure, but both are still otherwise participating.
- North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls filed a federal lawsuit against the Judicial Standards Commission (JSC) in late 2023, claiming that the restrictions on what she could say about the court system “violate the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment.” She later dropped the suit after the JSC dropped a probe over remarks she had made about the court system.
- Despite some well-known cases of social media companies banning users for their content, political communications through the internet are still generally less dependent on gatekeepers, such as editors or station managers, to get their messages out. That relative freedom allows political speech from a variety of sources to flourish.
Recommendations
1. Continue opposing attempts to buy influence over election administration.
Officials should be on guard against attempts by organizations like the CTCL and U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence to circumvent North Carolina’s ban on the private funding of election administration. The General Assembly may need to adjust that ban in response to those attempts.
2. Oppose Restricting Online Political Speech.
Government restrictions on internet communications create new barriers to entry in the political process for political novices and challengers seeking to promote their political speech online, but they do little to stop trolls (people or groups who sow discord through divisive online messages) and dark-money groups.
3. Provide More Free Speech for Judges and Judicial Candidates.
Judges should not speak publicly in a way that may affect the outcome of cases before them. They should be able to talk publicly about matters of public concern, however. In addition to enhancing the free speech rights of judges, that change would give the public more information about judicial candidates and the judicial system.
