As the vote battles heat up in 2024, the North Carolina GOP pushes forward

The new legislation also complicates voting by mail, adding the requirement that voters’ signatures must be verified and introducing a “two-factor” authentication process that would be unique to North Carolina and leave voting experts confused as to how it works. would work.

As in other states, many more Democrats in North Carolina are now voting by mail, with Mr. Trump and his allies fueling widespread Republican distrust of the practice. In the 2022 midterm elections, more than 157,000 people in the state voted by mail. Forty-five percent were Democrats and 35 percent were independents.

While Republican lawmakers wrote the legislation, they received outside help.

Three GOP lawmakers, including Mr. Daniel, met with Ms. Mitchell, the Trump-allied attorney, and Jim Womack, a leader of the North Carolina Election Integrity Teams, in May. That organization is part of a national network of right-wing election activists coordinated in part by Ms. Mitchell, who declined to comment.

The two activists pressed lawmakers for their laundry list of changes to electoral laws, including measures for same-day registration, absentee ballots and voter roll-keeping, according to a video of Mr Womack summarizing the meeting. The video was obtained by Documented, a liberal research group, and shared with The New York Times.

“Same-day registration, we all agree, violent agreement, that same-day registration will now be a preliminary vote,” Mr. Womack said in the video of the meeting. “So if you’re going to register on the same day, you have at least a little bit of time, maybe 7 to 10 days, to get a chance to investigate and challenge that voter under the law, unlike where it is now, where it has less than 24 hours to do so.”

Mr. Daniel declined to answer questions about the role that Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Womack played in preparing the accounts.