N.C. Republicans to write Americans out of America
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow opened her show Monday night with how North Carolina Republicans in the lame-duck session retooled a dentistry bill into one that would strip power from incoming Democrats who defeated GOP candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and superintendent of public instruction. The ploy is an obvious power grab, N.C. state Senator Dan Blue told Maddow. But there is more to it.
N.C. Republican legislators have among other things voted to strip the power to select State Board of Elections members from the incoming governor, Democrat Josh Stein, and reassigned it (and BoE budget control) to the incoming state auditor.* What’s the state auditor got to do with controlling the Board of Elections, you ask?
Dave Boliek is a MAGA Republican who won a seat in North Carolina’s executive branch. When in 2016 the lame-duck GOP legislature passed a series of bills to transfer executive powers to itself from the incoming governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, the state Supreme Court struck them down for violating the state constitution’s separation-of-powers provisions. But Boliek the auditor was elected on Nov. 5 to the executive branch. Problem solved!
Among the key state races North Carolina Republicans lost to Democrats this fall is the state Supreme Court seat held by Justice Allison Riggs, a former voting rights attorney who’s argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Her GOP opponent, Jefferson G. Griffin, led on Election Night by over 7,000 votes. But after counting absentee and provisional ballots in the days after Nov. 5, Riggs led by ~622 votes. Her statewide lead shrank minimally after a majority of counties completed their machine recounts on Monday. A hand recount is expected to begin the first week in December.
But Griffin is not done. In over 300 protest documents he filed a week ago, he demanded more:
Griffin requested a recount, which the State Board of Elections granted on Tuesday, saying it should be finished up by Nov. 27, the day before Thanksgiving. The results could change if state officials decide there’s merit to formal protests Griffin also filed on Tuesday, alleging that more than 60,000 people’s votes should not have been counted at all.
Votes by felons and voters who died before Election Day or who had registrations denied, Griffin argued, had been counted improperly, reports the Raleigh News and Observer:
While some of Griffin’s protests fall under more traditional categories for challenging voter eligibility, a substantial portion of them rely on legal theories put forward by Republican lawyers that have so far been rejected by state and federal courts.
But wait! There’s still more. Attorneys for Griffin on Monday filed public records requests with local Boards of Elections demanding “a list of voters who self-identified as having never lived in the United States” and who submitted “a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot.” (I obtained a copy of the letter.)
Let’s be clear. North Carolina Republicans want these Americans’ votes thrown out, whatever black-letter law says about their eligibility to cast them and have them counted.
Some background:
North Carolina
A U.S. citizen who has never resided in the U.S. and has a parent or legal guardian that was last domiciled in North Carolina is eligible to vote in North Carolina.
The NC state statute is 163-258.1. Griffin and state Republicans are fishing for a loophole so they might disenfranchise enough expats — American citizens — to win the state Supreme Court seat Griffin just lost.
For reference: OUT OF THE 2.8 MILLION OVERSEAS CITIZENS ELIGIBLE TO VOTE, 3.4% VOTED IN 2022. That’s over 95,000 votes. North Carolina is the 9th most-populace state, 3 percent of U.S. population. If the percent of Americans living overseas and voting in N.C. is proportional to N.C. population, that’s potentially almost 2,900 votes. I don’t know how many expat voters claiming N.C. have never lived in the U.S., but Griffin and his colleagues are not above robbing them of their votes. Griffin trails Riggs by ~622 votes.
The state’s Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act (UMOVA) grants voter eligibility to voters who may not already be protected by Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), a federal law granting some U.S. citizens overseas the right to vote. One provision of UMOVA allows individuals born overseas to parents or guardians who were North Carolina residents to vote in the state. These overseas voters are not required to have lived in North Carolina or the United States themselves. The plaintiffs argue this provision grants non-residents the right to vote, in violation of the state constitution, which grants the right to vote only to residents of North Carolina. They ask the court to permanently block the provision of UMOVA and declare it unconstitutional. They also request an order requiring election officials to stop processing ballots from any UMOVA voters suspected of non-residency, remove the option for these voters to request an absentee ballot, reject any new registrations from them and ensure none of their ballots are counted in any future elections unless they can provide identification that proves their residency. On Oct. 21, 2024, the trial court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction. On Oct. 22, the plaintiffs filed their notice appealing this decision to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
STATUS: On Oct. 29, 2024, the North Carolina Court of Appeals denied the plaintiffs’ petition for writ of supersedeas appealing the trial court’s denial of their motion for preliminary injunction. Individuals born overseas to parents or guardians who were North Carolina residents will be allowed to vote in North Carolina in the November election.
On Nov. 1, the Republican plaintiffs asked the North Carolina Supreme Court to pause the lower court’s ruling pending appeal and take up the case for review.
The conservative Carolina Journal adds:
“If Plaintiffs prevail on appeal, their constitutional claim threatens to strip untold numbers of voters — including military service members serving outside the State — of their right to participate fully in our State’s elections,” the elections board’s court filing continued. “This Court should reject Plaintiffs’ damaging request, just as the Court of Appeals did last week.”
“Plaintiffs’ petition asks this Court to throw out the ballots of U.S. citizens who cast their votes in compliance with the Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act (UMOVA), a state statute passed unanimously by our General Assembly in 2011,” lawyers representing the state elections board wrote Monday. “Plaintiffs insist their challenge is limited to a small group of U.S. citizens who have never actually lived in the United States. But Plaintiffs’ legal argument cannot be so easily contained.”
DNC lawyers also asked the state Supreme Court to reject Republicans’ request.
The NC GOP means to win by any means necessary, no matter whose rights they violate.
Watch your backs, Dear Readers. They will stop at nothing.
* Sitting Gov. Roy Cooper will likely veto the measure just as surely as Republicans will try to override that veto before they lose their veto-proof majority in January.