What North Carolina Just Wrote Into Its Constitution

Disclosure: The author leads the North Carolina Housing Table, a housing advocacy coalition, and founded The State. Results below are unofficial until the state canvass on Nov. 24.

The bottom of the ballot

More than 4 million North Carolinians answered the property tax question on Nov. 3: 2,492,761 for and 1,574,188 against, according to Fox Carolina's count. Most of them got there after a long walk down the ballot, past the races everyone talked about, to three questions almost nobody campaigned on in their neighborhood.

One of those voters, Lee Rankin of Charlotte, put the stakes plainly to WFAE: "I can afford to pay my taxes, but if I wasn't in a good place, I wouldn't be able to."

All three amendments passed. The income tax cap won with nearly 62%, WFAE reported. The property tax limit won with 60.4%, per Fox Carolina. Photo ID for mail voting won with about 59%, per WFAE. WECT reports these counts stay unofficial until the state canvass on Nov. 24.

A constitution is the load-bearing wall of a state. A law can be changed by the next legislature with a simple vote. A constitutional amendment cannot: undoing one takes three-fifths of each chamber and another statewide vote. On Nov. 3, North Carolina added three new walls. Here is each one: what it does, the best case if it works as sold, and the worst case if it does not.

Wall one: the income tax cap

What it does. The constitution used to cap the state income tax at 7%, a limit voters set in 2018. The new amendment, Session Law 2026-4, lowers that ceiling to 3.5%. Today's flat rate is 3.99%, and as WUNC reported, the budget already schedules 3.49% for 2027 through 2029. So nobody's paycheck changes because of this vote. What changes is how high a future legislature can ever go.

The case for it. Sen. Michael Lee, the lead sponsor, told WBTV the state's tax changes "have produced more than a decade of strong revenue growth while letting people keep more of what they earn, and this amendment locks in that progress." Sen. Ralph Hise went further, telling WFAE: "I fundamentally disagree with the state concept of an income tax." The John Locke Foundation applauded the result.

The case against it. Gov. Josh Stein called it "a con, a cynical shell game and a millionaire protection cap," Fortune reported. Rep. Robert Reives II, a Chatham County Democrat, argued to WFAE that the costs would shift to fees and sales taxes. The NC Budget & Tax Center, a progressive group, estimates a 3.5% cap blocks about $17 billion a year in potential income tax revenue.

Best case. The economy keeps growing, revenue keeps coming in at lower rates, and the cap simply guards a path lawmakers already chose. Families and employers plan with a ceiling they can trust. North Carolina sells that certainty to companies weighing a move.

Worst case. A deep recession hits. During the downturn of the 2000s, by the Budget & Tax Center's account, North Carolina raised taxes on high earners to limit school cuts. That tool is now capped. The money has to come from somewhere else: sales taxes, fees, or cuts. Those land hardest on households that spend most of what they earn. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds sales and excise taxes take 6.6% of income from the lowest-earning fifth of North Carolina families and 1.1% from the top 1%, under 2024 law.

Who carries the risk. In good years, almost nobody. In a bad year, the classroom and the clinic that depend on the state budget, and the family paying sales tax on diapers and gas.

Wall two: the property tax limit

What it does. Session Law 2026-5 requires the General Assembly to limit how much a county or city's property tax levy can grow. A levy is the total dollars collected, not the tax rate. The amendment contains no number; lawmakers still have to set it. Senate leader Phil Berger named 20 lawmakers in September to a Senate Select Committee on Property Tax Reform, WUNC reported, and Republican leaders plan to work on the details after the election.

So this wall went up without a measurement. Voters approved the idea of a limit. The legislature decides how tight it is.

The case for it. Rep. Brian Echevarria, a lead sponsor, has called tax increases that ride on rising home values a "tax on unrealized gains," Fortune reported. A homeowner on a fixed income watches the county reassess her house upward while her check stays the same. A cap gives her a number she can plan around. Donald Bryson of the John Locke Foundation told WUNC: "Neither amendment automatically reduces funding for North Carolina public schools."

The case against it. Property taxes pay for more than a quarter of North Carolina school operating costs, WUNC reported, citing the Department of Public Instruction. The Cornelius town board warned the limit "will not reduce the need for services, but will reduce the ability for the Town to provide them effectively." Lauren Fox of the Public School Forum told WUNC that limits at the state and local level are "hitting public school funding at both ends."

One modeled scenario. The NC Housing Coalition, a separate advocacy group, estimated for Fortune that a 2% cap over the last revaluation cycle would have saved the average homeowner about $84 a year and cut local revenue by about $950 million. That is one group's scenario, not the law. The real number depends on what lawmakers write.

Best case. The legislature sets a limit that counts new construction, adjusts in a recession and lets fast-growing counties keep up with new schools and roads. Homeowners get predictability. Counties get discipline without a crisis.

Worst case. The limit is tight and blind to growth. A county like Wake or Johnston adds thousands of homes but cannot raise the dollars to serve them. It turns to sales taxes and fees instead. Guilford and Sampson counties already approved local sales tax increases for education this election, WUNC reported. Renters get no direct break from a property tax limit, but they pay those sales taxes and fees in full.

Who carries the risk. The renter, the teacher in a growing district, and the small county with no tourist tax to lean on.

Wall three: photo ID for mail voting

What it does. Since 2018, the constitution has required photo ID for voters "offering to vote in person." Session Law 2024-58 strikes "in person," so the rule now reads: "Voters shall present photographic identification before voting." It keeps the line that the legislature's ID laws "may include exceptions."

In practice, little changes on Monday morning. State law already requires ID to vote by mail. Absentee voters send a copy of a photo ID or fill out an ID exception form. What changes is who can undo it. As WFAE noted, a future legislature can no longer drop the mail ID rule with an ordinary bill.

The case for it. Republican lawmakers argued it would strengthen election integrity. One Republican senator called it "a commonsense security measure that needs to apply equally to all voters," Ballotpedia reported. Supporters see no reason a mail voter should face a lighter check than the neighbor standing in line at the precinct.

The case against it. Critics told WFAE it was redundant, since the law already requires mail ID, and warned it could prove restrictive if election laws need to change later. It passed the Senate 30 to 19 and the House 72 to 45 with little Democratic support; Ballotpedia reported one House Democrat voted for it.

Best case. Nothing a voter can feel changes. The exception form stays. The fight over mail ID ends, and confidence in absentee ballots rises on both sides.

Worst case. The constitution says exceptions "may" be included, not that they must be. A future legislature narrows the exception form, and a voter who has no ID and cannot easily get one, often older or homebound, finds the mail ballot harder to use. With the rule now in the constitution, the fix runs through another amendment instead of a simple bill.

Who carries the risk. The voter who already finds the polls hard to reach, and who depends on the mailbox to be counted.

The machine underneath

Read one at a time, each amendment looks modest. Read together, the two tax walls form a single mechanism.

The state pays for schools and health care mostly through income and sales taxes. In fiscal 2024-25, the income tax brought in $17.0 billion and the sales tax $11.0 billion of $34.6 billion in General Fund revenue, according to the Office of State Budget and Management. Counties and cities pay for deputies, parks and much of school operations through property taxes. On Nov. 3, voters capped the main lever at the state level and ordered a cap on the main lever at the local level. When both big levers are capped, the pressure moves to what is left: sales taxes, fees and cuts. That is the shift Reives warned about, and it is where Guilford and Sampson counties already went for school money.

The voter ID wall is a different kind of wall. It does not move money. It moves power, from each future legislature to the voters who would have to approve any change.

The strongest case for all three. About six in ten voters chose them, in the same election where Democrats did well at the top of the ballot. WFAE's headline put it plainly: "NC voters went blue, but they gave the GOP 3 big wins." Those voters asked for limits they can count on, and they got them. A government that knows its ceiling has to set priorities.

The strongest case against. A constitution is meant to hold principles, not set fiscal policy for a crisis no one can see yet. Every one of these walls makes the next emergency harder to answer with an ordinary vote.

Both can be true. The voters were clear about what they want. The bill for it has not been written yet.

What we owe each other

Walls protect what is inside them. The question is always who is standing inside, and who is left out in the weather.

T.M. Scanlon asked what we owe one another, and his answer was a test: could we justify this choice to the person with the least power in it, on grounds that person could not reasonably reject? Walk the test down each wall. The homeowner on a fixed income can accept a property tax limit; it was built for her. The renter in a fast-growing county gets no homestead break and may pay the sales tax that fills the gap. She is owed a better answer than "we will write the number later." The mail voter who cannot easily get to a DMV is owed exceptions that stay real.

None of that is settled by the vote. It is settled by the bills that follow. Voters built the walls. Lawmakers now decide where the doors go.

What to watch

• The legislature's return. Lawmakers are scheduled to meet Nov. 16 to 19 and Nov. 30 to Dec. 18, Carolina Journal reported, and Republican leaders plan to work on the property tax limit.
• The number. What the Senate Select Committee on Property Tax Reform proposes, and whether it counts new construction and allows for recessions.
• The state canvass on Nov. 24, when these results become official.
• The first county budgets written under the new limit, and whether they lean on sales taxes and fees.
• The mail ID rules, and whether the exception form survives intact.