WRAL TV: McCrory hopes to educate North Carolinians about voting process with new group

Former Gov. Pat McCrory to lead North Carolina Right Count, a nonprofit that aims to educate the public about the voting process and boost confidence in elections.

WRAL TV | October 16, 2024

Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory hopes to be a resource for people who are skeptical of North Carolina’s election results.

That’s why McCrory has agreed to work with Right Count, an nonprofit organization that aims to educate the public about the voting rules and procedures in battleground states. McCrory chairs the group’s efforts in North Carolina.

The ultimate goal is to restore confidence in elections, which plummeted after the 2020 election when former President Donald Trump and others made inaccurate claims about how votes are counted, how ballots are stored, and election security overall.

Half of registered Republican voters in North Carolina have little or no confidence that the votes in the 2024 election will be counted accurately, a WRAL News Poll found last month.

Outrage over the 2020 election played a role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. And some media outlets that spread misinformation about the elections faced numerous lawsuits, for which some paid hundreds of millions of dollars.

“What I don’t want to have is either the left or right use excuses that [the election] wasn’t done correctly once a winner is declared,” McCrory told WRAL. “It’s important that we all have confidence in this system.”

Right Count plans to monitor the integrity of elections while also communicating to voters about how they work.

Right Count’s website attempts to address questions voters might have about North Carolina’s voting rules, such as: Can noncitizens vote in North Carolina? Are North Carolina’s voting machines secure? And how does North Carolina make sure that election results are correct?

McCrory hopes his affiliation as a Republican and experience in close elections gives him credibility with voters who are skeptical of the ballot-counting process.

After winning the 2012 gubernatorial race easily, McCrory lost his reelection bid in 2016 by about 10,000 votes after late-arriving ballots from Durham County gave Democrat Roy Cooper the win. McCrory’s campaign investigated the results before conceding about a month after Election Day.

“Since then, North Carolina has made strides in updating our election procedures, adding safeguards, and enhancing our capacity to ensure that even in the face of natural disasters, like Hurricane Helene, the integrity of the vote is maintained,” McCrory wrote in an opinion article sent to North Carolina media outlets.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections has already tweaked some election rules to allow easier ballot access to voters affected by Hurricane Helene — tweaks that have become the focus of misinformation on social media.

“We’re trying to teach the basic civics of how the voting process works — and about any changes that have been implemented [in western North Carolina] — to reestablish trust for those who might not trust it at this point in time,” McCrory told WRAL.

For more on RightCount’s work to build trust in the election among voters in North Carolina visit https://www.rightcount.org/states/north-carolina/.