- Absentee ballots are set to roll across North Carolina beginning this week, and maybe new rules as well.

Data centers and AI dominate discussion at G20 events in North Carolina this week.

And a blue ribbon education commission receives draft recommendations.

This is State Lines.

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♪ - Hi there and welcome to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for joining us today.

Joining all of us around the table, Nick Craig of the Carolina Journal and the Nick Craig Show.

Hi Nick.

- Hey Kelly, thanks for having me.

- Brad Crone of Campaign Connections joins us.

Good to have you back Mr.

Crone.

- Thank you.

- Dawn Vaughan of the News and Observer, as always a pleasure.

- Good to be here.

- And representing WUNC News, Collin Campbell.

Hi Collin.

- Hey Kelly.

- We thought we would have an easy, easy Labor Day weekend.

Guess what?

- If only.

Nick, let's start with you and talk about absentee voting.

Those ballots are being mailed across North Carolina as of what, noon Friday.

First ballots going out for that November midterm election.

A big one indeed if you're planning on voting in person.

That begins October 15th and runs through October 31st.

There's the civic disclaimer.

New rules though, passed on Friday, would draw a sharper line between absentee ballot problems that voters can correct, as well as those that would require a replacement ballot.

A missing voter signature, that can be corrected under the new rules, but unsealed envelopes or missing witness information or the wrong name being on the ballot signature, would require election officials to cancel or spoil that ballot and issue a new one if time allows.

The permanent rules are headed for legislative review.

In the meantime, the State Board of Elections says these temporary rules can guide county election officials.

I wouldn't call it guidance as much as this is what you're going to do, local county boards.

Am I right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

The numbered memo that the State Board approved around nine o'clock Friday morning does set up these standards and this process.

And the one that's gotten a lot of the media coverage, no surprise, is these envelopes that are not fully sealed.

And this comes back to the discussion over election integrity.

I mean, I'll use the analogy of if you're in a grocery store or a gas station and there's a snack bar on, or a snack or candy bar or something on the register and the package is ripped open, you probably wouldn't buy it.

Why?

There's a potential that that had been tampered with and that's the same argument that you'll hear from election integrity officials across the state of North Carolina that if you're going to vote absentee by mail, which is important to note, North Carolina has the longest absentee period anywhere in the United States.

- We're the first to start.

- First to start and is the most lengthy.

It is 60 days of absentee voting.

That if you're going to vote that way, you need to follow the process.

The envelopes need to be sealed and there cannot be any question that your ballot was potentially tampered with somewhere between probably your house where you mailed it and then the State Board of Elections.

- Brad, this was a three-two vote.

The two Democrats on the State Board voted against it.

The three Republicans pushed it through simple majority.

Why is this so partisan?

- Well, I think the Democrats see it as window dressing, that it's a possibility walking down the tight line of denying access to people who need to use mail-in ballots.

Here's the deal though, North Carolina has a long history of safe and secure elections.

It goes back to what you said, we need to follow the rules.

The rules are clear cut, follow the rules.

I don't see this as a step by the State Board of trying to deny anybody access.

They're just saying we have clear cut rules to provide for a safe and secure election, follow 'em.

- Dawn, while on one side I think it's such a big deal if an absentee ballot envelope comes in unsealed, either internally unsealed or the main mailing envelope's unsealed, one side goes, "Hey, no big deal."

Other side says, "Huge deal."

- I don't think I've ever heard an elections discussion that didn't have a lot of partisanship in it.

I think that's just the nature of the game and who's pushing it and then who's questioning it.

So I think that's kind of a given.

What stands out the most to me with this is how close and how long it took for them to just get their business together.

There's that phrase, good enough for government work.

And I guess that's where we are with this because it's right up on, as we were saying, that ballots are being mailed out now and they finally got everything settled.

- Yeah, a lot of the concerns we heard on this were purely from Governor Josh Stein was over the process used.

Because they were originally going through what's known as the rulemaking process.

The State Board of Election passed these in the form of a rule back in July, which would have given you more time to get this thing out there and known to the public.

That process got bogged down because when it goes to the Rules Review Commission, people can object, the governor did, along with some other people, which now means that has to go to the legislature for final passage.

So it can't be an official rule per se, but it can be a guidance in the form of a memo.

So they decided this week to go back and do it that way, but they did it very much at the last minute.

There was a press conference on Thursday.

They wouldn't answer any questions about what was gonna be proposed to the board on Friday morning.

And then Friday morning they passed this in the party line vote, hours before absentee ballots go out.

So certainly, since they could have been more transparent about this, they could have done this earlier and through a different mechanism that maybe would ease some of the confusion around what are the rules.

- Whether you like these rules or not, should voters be satisfied, whether they're Republican or Democratic voters, about the process of changing or codifying a rule a couple of hours, up to an hour before ballots are mailed?

- Well, so the vote in fact did happen probably around 9:30 or so Friday morning as they went through the meeting.

But as Colin mentioned, this was discussed back in July.

It went through the Rules Review Commission, was approved unanimously, nine to nothing.

Had it not been for the objections, predominantly by those on the political left, this would have just gone into place.

But because of those objections and the process as it relates to the Rules Review Commission, it now is kicked back to the legislature.

So while the vote, to Dawn's point, was maybe good enough for government, or at the very last minute, it's not like these rules just popped out of thin air yesterday.

They'd been pretty widely discussed for the last couple of months.

- Brad, but at the end of the day, it is a process, and if 10 or so written objections come in from across the state, the process says the legislature needs to step in and approve these rules.

Good call?

- Yes, good call.

And I think the legislature does need to review it.

We need to be very careful when we're looking at access to the ballot box.

- Next topic comes out of the 2026 G20.

The Innovation Ministerial brought international officials and some of America's top technology executives to Chapel Hill, North Carolina this week.

Artificial intelligence and data centers dominated the discussion.

Elon Musk, in a video teleconference, said expectations of future power shortages are widely shared in the industry at this time.

Mark Zuckerberg said worker shortages are slowing the growth of America's AI infrastructure.

The website datacentermap.com is already listing 97 operating data centers throughout North Carolina.

Brad, to you, excellent event for North Carolina to host.

The topic is, quote, controversial.

However, the camel's nose appears to be under the tent.

90 plus data centers in use, and nobody's complained about them.

- Well, and you have several more on the table within the next few months across North Carolina.

One, for example, down in Richmond County in Rockingham that's up for discussion.

Here's what concerns me, is that our political leadership at both the federal level and at the state level, I would say 85% of 'em really don't understand the impact of AI and the technology, the innovative technology that we're facing, and the positive aspects of it as well as the negative aspects of it.

So as we look at policy at a statewide level on AI, I think the go slow approach is a smart process at this point in time.

Just this week, Bill Gates was on national media saying that we've got to do guardrails on AI policy to make sure that we have positive outcomes.

Because if not, we're building a system in a moon race with China that may end up being a real threat to our human society.

And so those are real consequences that we've got to look at.

- Dawn, from a media perspective, I know News & Observer covered this very, very well.

Is this a big deal for North Carolina to set aside the topic of the G20 coming and Nvidia CEO in town?

- Yeah, and there were some protesters that weren't happy about it, but anything that shines a light on the triangle areas generally, well, it can be a good thing economically and everything else and just the attention there.

But to your point about the data centers and people paying attention, people have busy lives.

Sometimes it's not until it's in front of their face that they really think about it.

And I think because AI is probably gonna be the word of the year, that sort of thing, and that being tied to data centers, that's why this is suddenly such a big deal.

And because these really major names are talking about it, that puts it out front for everybody.

- Colin, we have these tech CEOs, billionaires, and really forward thinkers coming into the triangle, into the belly of North Carolina politics.

Even suddenly, does this influence thinking of the Republicans and Democrats at the state level?

- You know, this is gonna be an interesting one to watch how much this percolates up to the state level.

A lot of the concerns and the action around data centers have been very much at the local level.

County governments, town governments passing these moratoriums or considering them and sort of blocking data center development.

And then at the state level, you have policymakers who've come up with some ideas, but weren't really able to get any of them very far into the process, let alone across the finish line during this past session.

And some of that is differences between the House and Senate on how do you regulate data centers.

There's probably a huge push from lobbyists within the industry to try to craft rules that are either favorable to them or sort of block rules that might stymie the development of AI and data centers in this state.

So it's gonna be a hot topic, I think, going into the 2027 legislative session.

- And we'll look at local in the next segment.

But Nick, having the high technology discussions in this state, I did notice one thing.

It seemed to be very focused.

Anytime you bring Trump administration officials down, it can go a million different topics.

This seemed focused and it seemed right on target.

It was AI, data, high tech, and right in the RTP and then over in Asheville.

- Yeah, and this backs up with some pretty fiery posts on True Social this week from the president as it relates to data centers.

I think the reality is one that's very simple.

There's a lot of money in AI right now.

These companies are going to build data centers.

The question I think that North Carolina has to ask themselves is whether we wanna be involved in that process or whether we want our neighboring states to maybe have that advantage.

Or as Brad talked about, maybe neighboring countries.

So like China, Russia, other countries throughout the globe that will happily take some of that.

We're not talking about a couple dollars here.

We're talking about tens, hundreds of billions of dollars.

- Brad, I wanna ask you this question.

I'm from North Carolina and you've been here a long time, if not the entire time of the Crone existence.

This hits me like back in the '80s and early '90s, the old hog farm debate.

The hog farmers wanted hog farms everywhere, including right in my backyard, but not their backyard.

That all got regulated.

Now there's data centers and it sure seems the same way.

They're coming in and saying, "Why don't you have one in your neighborhood?

Meanwhile, I'll be back in Silicon Valley."

- Yeah, and you're seeing a different approach from the data center folks right now too because of the pushback.

They're actually willing to come to the table and do community benefit contracts.

So the early folks got the data centers.

A lot of them were incentivized by the state with tax incentives for job creation and property tax abatement.

And now they're actually coming to the table, Meta, Google, the big players are saying, "Hey, listen, what can we do to help the schools?

What can we do to help the community college?

What can we do to help the infrastructure?"

So at least big tech is listening to local officials at the county and municipal level, saying, "If we're coming into your community to invest, we want to make sure that we're a good neighbor and that you feel like we're being a good neighbor."

- Yeah, speaking of neighbors, Cary, North Carolina, the latest community to pause approval of new data centers, adopting an 18-month moratorium recently.

Town leaders say they simply need time to develop local regulations, even though Cary leaders say there are no large projects pending.

Now Durham, North Carolina, Apex, and Holly Springs, all in the Triangle area, have paused new data centers for now.

Northeast, Northampton County, has a 32-month moratorium in place.

In Stokes County, more Western, an 1,800-plus acre data center proposal remains under debate.

Public hearings there are scheduled for next week.

Now we can go from Silicon Valley to Main Street, North Carolina.

I read Stokes County, that could be a $20 million tax revenue impact on that county, and they're fighting it.

- So it's the trade-off, like we were talking about, and you mentioned with the hog farms.

There was a time, and they changed some of the tax breaks this year for data centers.

There was a time where there were incentives and people wanted them to come because of that money, and then now, because of all this attention now, it's like, well, wait a minute.

What does this actually mean?

What are people's opinions on AI?

What are the environmental impacts of this?

And the building itself, it looks like something out of maybe Stranger Things.

So it's not particularly visually appealing.

So when you think about they're making their pitch to these local governments, Cary has had some problems lately, but generally, triangle municipalities are doing pretty well with jobs, people wanting to come here.

So maybe they're not as maybe desperate for the money as some places that are, but then those communities have to think what's the trade-off?

What is what you like about living in your rural area?

How is that going to change?

All of a sudden, you have this big metal box building in the middle of your county.

- It's down to acreage, Colin.

Every county's not the same, and a big data center in Cary where people are moving in droves dozens a day compared to a rural North Carolina county with lots of farmland.

It seems like a different discussion.

- For sure.

You can look at Stokes County in particular.

That's where Hanging Rock State Park is.

It's very, very rural.

There's a lot of places you can put a data center there that wouldn't necessarily impact neighbors.

Inside a town like Cary, there's not a whole lot of land left in Cary that's not houses or shops at this point.

So it's hard to do it in a place like that that's not gonna be where the noise or the construction or some aspect of the data center impacts the people living nearby.

And certainly, the smaller counties in North Carolina really would love that property tax revenue.

These places like Richmond County, Stokes County aren't really growing, and they're not adding population.

So if they wanna do things like build new schools, which we've seen in a lot of the rural counties in Virginia where data centers have been more heavily concentrated, that extra revenue from a big facility like that can go a long way.

So it's definitely a trade-off of, do you want the money or do you wanna avoid some of the hassles that come with data centers?

- Nick, there are multiple data centers in the triangle already operating.

I think these moratoriums, they're affecting a certain size, am I right?

These are these large warehouse-sized data centers.

- Yeah, and I guess it depends on the moratorium, but you mentioned in your lead-in what I think to be the most interesting thing about this and really shows how politically polarizing this is.

Cary put in place a moratorium, yet there was no requested data center proposals in front of them.

This is such a hot-button political issue that government leaders across the country, not just here in North Carolina, do not wanna be on the wrong side of this debate, and so they're rushing for these moratoriums even when there's nothing even, presumably, on the horizon.

- Brad, North Carolinians have a point when they don't really trust or wanna hear the opinion of the modern-day Rockefeller and Carnegie coming in and saying, "This is good for you.

"Take it."

- Well, there's a lot of concern that we're rushing down the path for calamity, and that without having guardrails in place, we're in a war with China on AI and the future of AI and the impact that it could have in a positive economic aspect, but also, once you reach attainment in AI, what is the threat that it poses for us without guardrails?

So we've gotta build a system.

We gotta make sure we get it right, and we only got 18 to 24 months, according to the experts in the tech industry, to get it right, so it's absolutely imperative that we do that.

It will be life-transforming.

Your generation and your children's generation will live in a totally different world because of this technology, but it's also a threat to us, too, and we've gotta understand that.

- I understand that, but at the local level, Brad, the Cary Town Council members said there's only so many pipes, too many straws you can put in Jordan Lake and suck water out of it, and the Dan River up towards the mountains, that's what they're worried about.

China can win the AI race, but if we're thirsting to death and we're dry, what kind of deal is that?

- Yeah, and how much energy will we consume?

One plant could consume the total amount of energy that Shearon Harris produces every day.

So, I mean, those are real big questions that the local folks have got to deal with.

- How do we not see this, Dawn, that one warehouse can take a city or a state's worth of power?

Five years ago, we weren't talking about this.

- Right, but you were saying, like, Cary doesn't even have a proposal, but they're already worried about it.

They're seeing what other people are doing, and I think that's what these other governments are doing.

- Yeah, I mean, that's the sort of thing with the, you know, there's definitely the push at the local level.

People come out of these public hearings, they demand that their city council take this kind of action, but really, given the environmental impacts at a broader level, this has to be a state or a national issue in how you regulate this, 'cause if you've got this sort of piecemeal, the effects of the water supply or the electricity supply, that's everywhere, that's not just affecting the people within a three-mile radius of where you build something.

- And people, if you suddenly, if there's an issue with your water and electricity, you're gonna go to your local government, and they don't care how much money you got five, 10 years ago in property taxes.

You know, they're gonna wanna know, or they'll move away, 'cause it won't be a good place to live anymore.

- For you two reporters who will cover this and cover both sides and the loud voices at the meeting, how will you discern between the local person who's open-minded to good-crafted policy to help the tax base, versus the people who come in, the lawyers, to file the lawsuits, who stop it because they philosophically and politically are supposed to oppose it, and that's what they get their grants to do?

- Whenever I cover these, I always try to look for who actually lives there, because you see a lot of these public hearings, and anybody can come sign up and speak, but they usually have to state their name and address, and sometimes they're an activist on one side or the other of these issues, driving from two hours away, because they wanna see this happening.

But what's really interesting to watch is if it's Stokes County, what are the people in Stokes County actually telling their local leaders?

- Mm-hmm.

- You would, yeah, go ahead.

- I was gonna say, I'm looking forward to the legislative session, you know, the long session that starts, and they're probably going to do something about this, which is another reason why local governments wanna take some action now.

- You host a show, it's getting some attention, and you're interviewing people.

Do you get a lot of pushback from both sides trying to reach out to you to influence you?

They may not have a stake in Cary or Stokes County, but they wanna get on there and either promote AI or fight AI.

- Yeah, well, as I mentioned, it is such a hot issue right now.

It has got people on the whole side of the political right and the whole side of the political left talking.

It is kind of an interesting marriage when you see people that, for the most part, are typically diametrically opposed on a wide variety of policies fighting on the same side of a data center moratorium.

- Our next topic discusses public education, where the North Carolina Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Ed met this week, but members say its draft recommendation, at least the one they received, is too vague for a vote at this time.

The draft copy leaves teacher pay for future study.

It puts off recommendations on school accountability.

Members showed more support for statewide literacy efforts and curriculum resources, which could particularly help smaller school districts, Colin.

I read that.

It was very vague for a Blue Ribbon Commission.

And I don't understand.

The commission sits and waits for someone else to do the homework and give it to them?

- Yeah, so they've got essentially staff within a sort of education policy group under the umbrella of NC State University that came forward with this plan.

And it seemed, as you mentioned, sort of the vagueness of it didn't seem to appeal to anybody.

But this is a challenge for this commission.

They set it up to be bipartisan.

There's members of the legislature from both parties on the board.

And understandably, people in different corners of the partisan world, plus people in different corners of the education system have very different ideas.

And getting them all to agree on something that they can submit to policy makers as this is our report of the Blue Ribbon Commission is a really hard ask.

And I think that's why you're seeing a lot of vague things.

But one thing will be interesting to watch as this goes forward, is sort of what are the consensus items?

Because that will give us some sense of once you put aside a lot of the partisan debates over different pieces of the education system and what we need to do better, what do Republicans and Democrats at the end of the day think they all are on the same page about?

And could we at least get that done out of this?

- Dawn.

- Whenever there's a newly formed commission committee, how big is it?

What does that mean that the meetings are really long and no one agrees on everything?

Is it too small where you don't have enough diversity of voices?

So you need to strike that middle balance.

It doesn't seem like they're there yet.

So whenever you start a new group and want something out of it, like you need to have like a set task, a result that shows something tangible.

And it seems like they've got some more work to do.

- Brad, why does it take a blue ribbon commission to come back to teacher pay?

It always is, whether you think they're paid well or not.

I don't know if that's a subjective opinion.

They're definitely middle class.

- It's just amazing.

And I've been covering, I've been around state government for a long time since 1980, '81 when I was a reporter for Don Curtis at WPTF.

And they've had blue ribbon commission, blue ribbon commission, blue ribbon commission.

They've had summits that Dr.

Friday's hosted.

And it all comes down to how are you treating your classroom teacher?

And if you want positive outcomes, you've got to increase the pay that we are paying our educators here in North Carolina.

- Well, PBS North Carolina, Nick's gonna love some William Friday 'cause he's the godfather of this station.

Bill Friday couldn't solve the problem.

He outlaunched a university system.

What's the point in this blue ribbon?

- Well, and I think this is an opportunity where you're continuing to see in North Carolina the growth of school choice because they can operate and transition things pretty quickly.

We see, and this is kind of one of the worst examples of this bureaucratic, bureaucracy that gets laid out here where you've got a blue ribbon commission that makes recommendations to the legislature that then tries to give some of those recommendations to local school boards where a much smaller school organization can say, hey, we see a problem, teacher pay, let's fix it.

And they can do it right away.

- Well, education funding on the board.

Final topic tonight, North Carolina health officials have released a new toolkit or guidance on two major changes to Medicaid taking effect months apart.

Beginning October 1st, 2026, many non-citizens will lose eligibility for Medicaid.

Those who may remain covered include some green card holders, lawfully residing children under 19 years old and lawfully residing women who are pregnant or were pregnant within the past year.

On January 1st, 2027, most adults age 19 through 64 must either have household income of $580 a month or complete 80 hours of work, school, job training, or volunteer service.

If you're a parent or caregiver of a child under 14, people with qualifying disabilities, or you're a woman who's pregnant or were pregnant within the past year, you're among those exempt from the requirement and stay on Medicaid.

It's a lot of rules, you may disagree with the rules, they do seem clear.

- Yeah, and this was sort of the guidance that we've been looking for ever since HR1, the so-called big beautiful bill passed last year, sort of putting the groundwork in place to do these kind of work requirements in order to be eligible for Medicaid.

And the challenge now is gonna be at the county level where a lot of these eligibility decisions get made, do they have the resources to go verify that you did in fact work 20 hours a week or you're making a certain amount of money and therefore eligible under these rules.

These county social service staffers are fairly stretched thin as it is, and I haven't seen more resources over the last year going to sort of make these things work.

So we'll see how bogged down some of the decisions get made in terms of how quickly people determine, did you meet the requirements or did you not?

- Dawn, I do wonder, this smells ripe for audits at the local level, but that is small potatoes for a Dave Boliek who's going after bigger fish.

How are we gonna know this whole program's gonna work well?

- Well, my first thought as you were talking was the money and how is it gonna be paid and just the worries about now that this federal bill is coming down to like at the state level where you actually have to get these things out there at the county level and is there enough funding?

Is this something that's gonna come up in the state budget fight?

And because the budget was so late this past year, 'cause it took so long, there's a big new budget that's supposed to start in a matter of months and this, I feel like healthcare is something that's always a big topic as far as money.

- Brad, voters certainly voted for this kind of reform.

The '24 election is testament of that, but they also voted for low taxes, they also voted for accountability.

So we're about to possibly cap taxes at the local level, but we've demanded accountability from our federal elections.

How do voters win on this?

They voted for both something they want and something they don't.

- Yeah, that's the big problem.

The drawing the line in the sand with the voters, I think the big problem's gonna be the accountability aspect.

Look at Nash County, for example.

They already have problems with Social Security, with their social services system.

So it's a real big issue.

Big cuts are coming too.

- Nick, 30 seconds and we're outta here.

Last word to you.

- I mean, I think the eligibility requirements make a lot of sense.

We talked a lot about the Medicaid expansion, we're at 733,000 people over the last couple of years and these are the requirements and the state's gonna have to follow them.

- Like a good radio host, right on time.

Thanks to our panelists and thanks for you for watching.

We have the email address for you, statelines@pbsnc.org.

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Share your analysis.

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I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.

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