The new measure, which will take effect for the upcoming midterm elections, requires every early voting site in the state to stay open 12 hours a day each weekday (in addition to any weekend hours). By mandating such a large number of hours, the new rule will make it prohibitively expensive for some counties to operate early voting locations. Because the law was passed very late in the legislative session, after many counties set their election budgets, many smaller counties will likely be required to close early voting locations so they don’t overspend. “This bill came out of nowhere. County officials weren’t told about it,” said Tomas Lopez, the executive director of the civil rights group Democracy North Carolina. “It’s making it much more expensive to actually conduct an early voting program that reaches as many voters as possible.”
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Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, contends that Democrats gamed the flexible schedules of polling places by keeping sites in heavily Democratic neighborhoods open for longer hours. Woodhouse says the new law is an effort to prevent those practices and make voting hours fair. “We are going to follow the letter and spirit of the court order,” Woodhouse wrote in an emailed statement, referring to the 4th Circuit’s 2016 ruling that blocked an earlier GOP attempt to cut early voting in the state from 17 days to 10. “The costs to the local counties were not a concern by the leftist groups when they sued us, so they can’t be a concern now.”