If at first you don’t succeed….
“North Carolina will be the first and only state where elections oversight is within the state auditor’s office,” explains Ren Larson at The Assembly. Why is that and how did it happen? Therein lies a tale.
Let’s skip the odd bio of Dave Boliek, North Carolina’s newly elected Republican state auditor, and review the subhead, “Eight Years, Six Tries.” It started when Republicans lost the governor’s mansion in 2016 to Democrat Roy Cooper. The Republican-controlled legislature in a lame-duck session attempted a brazen power-grab aimed at transferring to the legislature some of Cooper’s appointment powers, including over the state Board of Elections:
In January 2018, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature’s transfer of appointment powers from the executive branch to the legislature was unconstitutional.
Yet again Republican legislators struck back, passing a bill in June 2018 to allow voters to decide whether to amend the constitution and allow the legislature to make all eight appointments. Voters rejected it.
Like déjà vu, Republicans in the legislature again stripped the governor of appointment powers in 2023 and expanded the board to eight members appointed by the legislature. This time, four votes went to legislative leaders of each party. A three-judge panel blocked the change, granting an injunction. (The case is still in superior court.)
In another lame duck session after losing the governor’s race again in November 2024, the GOP legislature went around the separation of powers stumblingblock by assigning control of elections oversight to the newly elected Republican state auditor, Boliek, a devout Trump supplicant elected to the executive branch.
(h/t BF)