The “disaster” is the NC GOP losing
As the nation braces for another game of “What Are the Chances?” with Donald J. Trump the returning contestant, the 2024 election is still in overtime in North Carolina.
Via Democracy Docket:
While the dust settles on the outcome of the presidential race, North Carolinians are still waiting to see who’ll sit on the state’s highest court.
Justice Allison Riggs, one of two liberals on the seven-member court, is locked into a tight race with appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin (R). Griffin was leading on Election Day but was surpassed by Riggs, who’s ahead by a few hundred votes.
The race isn’t North Carolina’s first judicial match to span several weeks. In the 2020 general election, now-Chief Justice Paul Newby (R) beat then-incumbent Justice Cheri Beasley (D) by just 401 votes. That race also involved a recount and didn’t conclude until December of 2020, when Beasley conceded.
The Riggs lead this morning stands at 625 votes. Tell us again that your vote doesn’t count.
A recount in the Riggs race starts today across most of North Carolina. (It started in my county on Tuesday and will take days; I was there Tuesday as an observer.)
Riggs is on track to defeat her Republican challenger by a couple of hundred votes more than Republican Paul Newby turned out Chief Justice Cheri Beasley in 2020.
I don’t have hard numbers on absentee ballot cures Democrat volunteers secured between Nov. 5 and Nov. 14 (the deadline), but Katherine Jeanes, Deputy Digital Director for NCDP, posted this estimate on Monday: over 800.
The Republican response to losing judicial races here is, as The Dude might say, “This aggression will not stand, man.”
So like clockwork, Republicans running the North Carolina legislature are scrambling to change ballot curing rules before the next election and, with Democrat Josh Stein the incoming governor, before they lose their veto-proof majority in January.
It’s a thing they do when they lose races: change the rules for the next one. After Judge Michael Morgan (hint: he’s Black) in 2016 won a North Carolina Supreme Court in what were nonpartisan judicial races (tipping the court majority in Democrats’ favor), the Republican-controlled legislature responded by switching the contest to a partisan one over the veto of newly elected Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat.
After it was clear Cooper had turned out incumbent governor Republican Pat McCrory in 2016, Republicans set about stripping the governor of powers (as Wisconsin Republicans tried with Democrat Tony Evers). Jamelle Bouie, then at Slate, called it “a new nullification crisis.”
Republicans are at it again now. Their vehicle this time? An amendment to a disaster relief bill:
The North Carolina House passed a bill Tuesday stripping incoming Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of all appointments to the State Board of Elections and giving them to a newly elected Republican official.
Currently, the board’s members are appointed by the governor, who is allowed to appoint a 3-2 majority of their own party. That means Democrats have controlled the board since 2017, when Gov. Roy Cooper took office, and would continue to do so throughout Stein’s term.
However, a provision tucked into a 132-page disaster relief bill would transfer all appointments to the state auditor, a position that was just won by Republican Dave Boliek after 16 years of control by Democrats.
The bill passed the House 63-46 Tuesday evening, just hours after it was made available to the public.
Democrats slammed Republicans for moving the complex bill so quickly and for tying it to hurricane relief efforts.
“This is a transparent power grab pushed through by a supermajority that’s not happy with the recent election results,” Rep. Lindsey Prather, a Buncombe County Democrat, said. “And you’re calling it a disaster relief bill. This is shameful and Western North Carolina isn’t going to stand for it
But jerking around with State Board of Elections appointments is only part of it. A State Board summary provided to me bulleted a few of the vote-counting rules SB 382 would change. Many involve ballot curing and provisional ballot counting. Go figure:
Election Administration Changes
3A.4(a) — Requires corrections to VR forms from voters (cures) to come in 3 days after election instead of by the day before canvass. Eliminates 6 days to cure.
3A.4(b) – Requires the use of the State Board’s template voter assistance log at the polling place.
3A.4(c) – Eliminates 6 days to cure HAVA ID required after election day; now noon on the third day after election.
3A.4(d) — Eliminates 6 days the opportunity to return with ID to cure lack of ID at the polls; now noon on the third day after election.
3A.4(e) — Requires counting of all provisional ballots by 5 pm on the third day after Election Day.
3A.4(f) – Request deadline for absentee ballot moved up one week to two weeks before Election Day.
— Absentee cures cut down 6 days, must be done by noon on Friday after election day.
3A.4(g) — Requires all election day absentees to be counted on election day night in an ongoing meeting starting at 5 pm
— Supplemental absentee meeting is only permitted for UOCAVA ballots
— Absentee ballot tallies must be announced at 5pm three days after Election Day (meaning all civilian absentees must be tallied included those that could have cured by noon that same day)
3A.4(h) – the above changes become effective Jan. 1, 2025.
This is in the weeds, but bear with me.
If a county party in North Carolina has a building fund for purchase, payoff or operating of a party headquarters, it may accept corporate contributions. The proposed change would turn that building fund into a corporate-funded slush fund for challenging election results:
Campaign Finance Changes
3A.5(a) — As of Jan. 1, 2025, political parties may use their party headquarters building funds to fund a legal action as defined in G.S. 163-278.300(4) or to make donations to candidate legal expense funds organized under Article 22M of Chapter 163. Building funds may accept unlimited corporate contributions. Candidate legal expense funds may already accept limited corporate contributions.
So. Here we go again.