Latest Breaking News

We are stuck playing whack-a-mole against a well-funded GOP intent on undermining democracy no matter what it takes….instead of having a legitimate opposing party with whom to compromise, collaborate or co-create solutions. (Ha! Laughable, isn’t it?)

The previous North Carolina Democratic governor Roy Cooper had stopped an attempt by the red legislature to steal authority for elections for themselves. A court ruling agreed that it needed to stay in the executive branch.

So the GOP changed tactics, and passed a law to put elections in the hands of the state auditor, also republican, but in the executive branch. https://www.courthousenews.com/north-carolina-governor-continues-fight-for-control-of-elections-boards/

After a separate panel of North Carolina Court of Appeals judges stayed the lower court’s ruling and allowed the auditor to gain control over appointments until the appeal is resolved or the court issues another decision, Boliek promptly flipped the majority on the state board of elections from Democratic to Republican and replaced the board’s executive director with the former general counsel for the speaker of the house.

In addition to the state board of elections, Boliek also gained the ability to appoint members to county election boards, and choose the board chair. Prior to the change, the governor had appointed members to the state board since 1901.

The state GOP has tried several times since 2016 to secure control over the state board of elections, which operates voting sites, maintains voter registration lists and handles election administration

So, if they are required to purge every 30 days by the SAVE act, and also required to hand over lists to the federal government by the SAVE act, and maintenance of those lists is in the hands of a GOP operator, it will be challenging to garner enough resources to fight the ‘glitches’ that will delete hundreds of thousands from the voter rolls for lame reasons.

North Carolina already had 100,000 people that the GOP tried to disenfranchise based in large part on nonsense, it has taken many months to partial resolve.

The actions by the Republican state auditor (or by the federal government who may inject themselves in this process) won’t need to be defensible; they just need to have a temporary effect that can’t be remedied in 30 days.