Our man in North Carolina Lex Alexander is back with more thoughts on Republican ratfuckery in the Tar Heel state.
-Adrastos
North Carolina Republicans have long wanted control of the state Board of Elections, which oversees state and local elections, and which is controlled by the governor’s office. (So, too, are majorities in the elections boards of the state’s 100 counties.) But because the GOP has held the governorship for only four years out of the past 32 and 16 of the past 100 or so, they’ve been mostly SOL.
So, the legislature, which has been controlled by the GOP and its gerrymanders since 2010, decided in 2024, when they had a veto-proof majority, to reassign control of the SBOE from the governor’s office to the office of the state auditor, effective May 1. The measure also granted the auditor the power to select the chairs of the 100 counties’ respective elections boards. That auditor, David Boliek, who was elected in 2024, just happens to be a Republican.
It’s worth pointing out here that North Carolina already is the most gerrymandered state in the country. A deep-purple, 50-50 state is in a GOP hammerlock because of it. As for the new state law, no other state puts its elections under its state auditor. But, as Billy Ball, editor of the statewide news outlet Cardinal & Pine, puts it, “It’s not about Boliek or what his office does. It’s about his party affiliation. If we had an official state dogcatcher and they were a Republican, lawmakers would have justified giving election powers to that office too.”
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein sued GOP legislative leaders to block the measure, and a three-judge Superior Court panel voted 2-1 to do so. The majority found, days before Boliek’s new powers were to take effect, that the measure “unreasonably disturb[s] the vesting of ‘the executive power’ in the governor (and) the governor’s obligation to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.”
The issue has ramifications for the still-pending election for a seat on the state Supreme Court – the only 2024 election in the country still not certified – and, arguably, for all future statewide elections. (I wrote about the GOP’s efforts to steal that election here for First Draft.) State Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, challenged incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs.
A count and two recounts of the ballots concluded that Riggs had won by 734 votes statewide. Griffin then tried to get the SBOE to cast out more than 60,000 ballots he claimed had been improperly cast. The SBOE limited the number of ballots to about 6,000.
A lot of litigation has transpired on the election lawsuit that I won’t go into, but the GOP-controlled state Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the people whose ballots were at issue would have 30 days to prove their eligibility to vote or else their ballots would be thrown out — even though they had complied with the law as it was on Election Day. Essentially, the Republicans were changing the election rules retroactively.
On April 29, a federal district judge blocked the SBOE from certifying the election while the case wends its way through the federal courts, just as the SBOE was about to start sending notices to voters who need to prove their voting eligibility within 30 days.
The next day, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled, in a two-paragraph, unsigned opinion and without having heard oral arguments, that Republicans could indeed take over control of the SBOE, which would give them leverage in trying to steal the Supreme Court seat.
Stein, the governor, is appealing the ruling on the elections board ruling to the state Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a 6-1 majority and Riggs, the lone Democrat, likely would have to recuse herself.
SBOE terms ended April 30, so, thanks to the state Court of Appeals, on May 1 Boliek reappointed one Republican member and appointed two other Republicans nominated by the state party. (He also will appoint two Democrats when that state party submits its nominees.)
The new SBOE could grant Griffin’s earlier request to throw out more than 60,000 ballots, which almost certainly would grant the seat to Griffin even though Riggs apparently won. Stein has publicly accused the state GOP of planning exactly that.
As statewide news outlet Cardinal & Pine editor Billy Ball wrote May 1, “This is what a very sick democracy looks like, North Carolina.”
If Republicans are successful in 1) stealing control of the N.C. State Board of Elections and 2) stealing a state Supreme Court seat, you can best believe that they will try it anywhere and everywhere else they see an opportunity. As Ball puts it, the end game is “to control elections in perpetuity, to hell with checks and balances.”
But as I write, the litigation ain’t over yet, so stay tuned.