From Sharma v. Hirsch, an opinion by Judge Wilkinson, joined by Judges Richardson and Rushing:

The plaintiff here lodges a challenge to the felony-disclosure requirement for a candidate running for federal office in North Carolina. This state law requires that candidates check a box indicating if they have any felony convictions and then submit a short supplemental form with basic information regarding such convictions and the restoration of citizenship rights. The district court upheld the statute. Because the felony-disclosure requirement falls within the Constitution’s broad grant of authority to the states to regulate elections, we now affirm. We remand appellant’s challenge to a separate address-disclosure requirement to the district court with directions to dismiss that claim as moot.

Siddhanth Sharma (“Sharma”) is a twenty-seven-year-old convicted felon who currently resides in Wake County, North Carolina. In September 2023, Sharma announced his candidacy for North Carolina’s Thirteenth Congressional District seat in the State’s 2024 Republican primary election. Sharma’s full citizenship rights had been restored on September 3, 2023, and he registered to vote on September 5. J.A. 233.

Prospective candidates seeking the nomination of a political party in a primary election must submit a notice of candidacy. See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-106(a); J.A. 91-92. Among other inquiries, the notice form asks, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Id. § 163-106(e). Candidates who check “yes” must submit a supplemental form which requires them to list “the name of the offense, the date of conviction, the date of the restoration of citizenship rights, and the county and state of conviction.” Id. Failure to fully complete the forms results in the “individual’s name [] not appear[ing] on the ballot,” and the voiding of all votes cast for that individual. Id.

. . .

Today, courts read the Qualifications Clause with a slightly broader lens to cover two types of government regulations: (1) laws that exclude or effectively exclude a candidate from the ballot, see, e.g., Thornton, 514 U.S. at 831, and (2) laws that publicly disadvantage certain political viewpoints on the face of the ballot, see, e.g., Cook v. Gralike, 531 U.S. 510, 524-25 (2001).

Even under this more capacious framework, the felony-disclosure requirement is not a disqualification at all. If prospective candidates possess a felony history, they may still appear on the federal ballot, regardless of whether their full citizenship rights have been restored. See J.A. 127 & n.4. In this respect, the felony-disclosure requirement could not be more different than the term-limit requirement held unconstitutional in United States v. Thornton. There, Arkansas had amended its constitution to preclude any individual who had previously served two or more terms in the U.S. Senate from appearing on the ballot for that same position. Thornton, 514 U.S. at 784. While the Supreme Court acknowledged the possibility that a former senator or two-term incumbent could still be reelected with write-in ballots, it held that precedents supporting “manner” regulations did not enable states to completely eliminate all avenues to “ballot access.” Id. at 835. To comply with the Arkansas Constitution necessarily meant, in Thornton’s view, exclusion from the ballot. However, Sharma’s compliance with the felony-disclosure requirement—a simple checkbox and half-page form—enabled him to appear on the ballot.

Likewise, the felony-disclosure requirement did not derogatorily brand Sharma for his political viewpoints. The Court in Cook v. Gralike held that Missouri exceeded its power under the Elections Clause when it required that ballots include candidates’ positions and congressional voting histories on proposed term limits. 531 U.S. at 514-15. “Adverse [ballot] labels handicap candidates ‘at the most crucial stage in the election process—the instant before the vote is cast,’” and thus seek to impermissibly “dictate electoral outcomes.” Id. at 525-26 (first quoting Anderson v. Martin, 375 U.S. 399, 402 (1964); then quoting Thornton, 514 US. at 833-34).

North Carolina’s felony-disclosure requirement in no way disadvantages political viewpoints. The disclosure is the mere repetition of a simple fact contained in the public record. See State v. Sharma, No. COA19-591, 2020 WL 7350699, at *1, 5 (N.C. Ct. App. Dec. 15, 2020). Unlike the disclosure in Cook, the felony disclosure does not reveal anything about Sharma’s personal philosophy or opinions on public policy. And significantly, the felony disclosure does not appear on the ballot. To view it, voters must solicit the completed notice-of-candidacy form, which does not appear to be downloadable from the State’s website. Thus Sharma cannot claim that North Carolina seeks to influence voters at the “instant before the vote is cast.” Cook, 531 U.S. at 525 (quoting Martin, 375 U.S. at 402).

Being no form of unconstitutional qualification, the felony-disclosure requirement is a proper exercise of North Carolina’s “time, place, and manner” regulatory power. Thornton and Cook explicitly permit “manner” regulations that “encompass[] matters like ‘notices, registration, . . . protection of voters, [and] prevention of fraud and corrupt practices.” Cook, 531 U.S. at 523-24 (quoting Smiley, 285 U.S. at 366); see Thornton, 514 U.S. at 834-35. Disclosing past histories of lawbreaking in a prospective lawmaker falls within the ambit of permissible safeguards necessary to “ensur[e] that elections are ‘fair and honest,’ and ‘that some sort of order, rather than chaos is to accompany the democratic process.’” Cook, 531 U.S. at 524 (quoting Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974)).

I am not convinced the last sentence is an appropriate description of the scope of the “manner” power in terms of ballot access rules (see here), but perhaps more work is being done by (1) the minimally intrusive nature of the disclosure and (2) the fact that the disclosure is repeating publicly-available information.