North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday said he’s prepared to make full use of his veto pen to stymie Republican-led effort to restrict voting access in the wake of the 2020 elections.

“I expect Republican leadership in our North Carolina legislature to follow a lot of other state legislatures in using this ‘big lie’ of voter fraud as an excuse for laws that suppress the vote,” Cooper, a Democrat, said during a POLITICO Live event. “Let’s just get real about it: These laws are intended to discourage people from voting.”

Conservatives in battleground states like Georgia and elsewhere are pressing to overhaul their election processes after a cascade of emergency measures were put in place to safely conduct elections in the middle of a public health crisis and the number of people voting by mail increased exponentially.

Former President Donald Trump, who spent months denigrating mail-in voting on the campaign trail and social media, blamed these procedures for losing his bid for a second term to President Joe Biden. Trump and his allies have falsely alleged that the election was stolen from him and that millions of illegitimate votes, including in Georgia, put Biden over the top.

After dozens of legal challenges were rebuffed by state election authorities and the courts, Republicans quickly turned their attention to rejiggering state voting laws on the grounds of promoting trust and integrity in elections in ways that Democrats see as targeting members of their political base.

“The good thing about having enough Democrats in my state legislature to uphold a veto is that we can stop some of those things,” Cooper said on Thursday. “It’s going to fall on the states in order to fight that off.”

Cooper, who won reelection in 2020 in a state Trump carried by less than 2 percentage points, said the GOP efforts highlighted the need for Democrats to play offense in 2022 and grow the number of governor’s mansions they control across the country.

Nevertheless, Cooper said he hoped to be able to work with the Republican majorities in both houses of North Carolina’s General Assembly on things like education, health care and clean energy investment.

“This is a moment we should all grab together,” he said.

Other governors are more receptive to voting law changes. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, recently signed a bill removing the option for people to sign an affidavit to attest to their identify if they do not show up to the polls with an approved form of ID, toughening a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2018.

“The goal is not to repress votes, but the goal is to secure votes,” he said during the POLITICO event.

He added that if there were evidence that people are have difficulty accessing the identification necessary to vote, he would support efforts to remove that barrier.

“I’m all about expanding our voter registration, our voter participation,” Hutchinson said. “And we want to make sure that we don’t put unreasonable burdens. I hope that this does not create that.”

Here are some other takeaways from Thursday’s summit, which featured Cooper, Hutchinson and Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, as well as Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee — all of whom are Democrats.

Pandemic response entering new phase with vaccinations out

Governors said that some of the early vaccine troubles had calmed down as supply has increased, but that they’re now working through other difficulties. Hutchinson said that seeing hundreds of open slots in a clinic in his state recently persuaded him to expand eligibility and allow more people to schedule an appointment.

“We’ve got to push and push to get that demand increased,” he said.

Cooper said officials were increasingly concerned with addressing vaccine reluctance among conservative residents to prevent momentum on the effort from stalling out.

Polis said he believed that with the vaccination effort continuing to ramp up, reaching herd immunity by June was a “reasonable time frame.”

And several of the governors said they were looking to continue loosening restrictions on economic activity and public life, but at a more cautious pace than states like Texas and Mississippi.

“It’s just nuts to start arguing about masks at this point,” Inslee said. “We know they work. We know that it saves lives.”

Some also raised concern about the long-lasting toll of the pandemic.

Whitmer said students would need “years‘ worth of remediation” and additional support as a result of the disruptions to their education.

“The Covid learning loss is going to dwarf what we usually see in the summer,“ she said.

The Cuomo question

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who is serving as the head of the National Governors Association, is facing serious sexual harassment accusations from at least six women. The situation has spread well beyond Albany as Cuomo refuses to resign. He has gone so far as to say doing so would be antidemocratic.

The state attorney general has hired two outside lawyers to oversee an investigation into the allegations, and his fellow governors seem content to let that play out before weighing in on his future.

“I’ve seen the headlines just like everybody else has, but I haven’t really dived into the issues that are at hand, but I hope there’s investigations to get to the truth of the matter,” Polis said.

Whitmer, herself a survivor of sexual assault, said the allegations were serious and needed to be looked at. But she also questioned whether Democrats and Republicans were being held to the same standard.

“We just had a president who lasted all four years with numerous allegations against him, so far as rape,” she said. “No one on his own side of the aisle was making observations about whether or not he should stay in office.”

Inslee said allegations needed to be treated with gravity, regardless of whom they‘re against.

Thinking 2022 — and beyond

Cooper ruled out running for the seat held by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is retiring. Cooper said he promised to serve all four years — a vow other politicians have taken but later broken — though he added that it would leave the separately elected Republican lieutenant governor to take his spot.

Hutchinson said he wanted “to be engaged in the national discussion“ after he leaves office in 2022, and didn’t rule out a White House bid.

“I do want to be engaged and have the opportunity to serve in the future,” he said.

Hogan, whom some anti-Trump Republicans have been pushing to run for president, said that “it’s far too early” to talk about that.

He did say that the former president would continue to be a force in GOP politics for the foreseeable future, even though in Hogan’s estimate he “probably shouldn’t.”

North Carolina governor vows to stymie GOP-driven election changes (yahoo.com)