North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper filed a lawsuit against Republican legislative leaders on Oct. 17 over changes they made to the State Board of Elections and county boards of elections, which he says violated the constitutional separation of powers.
Under the measure, a bipartisan election board will be established instead of state and county boards being controlled by the party of the governor. Those boards will now have to be appointed by an equal number of Republicans and Democrats to make eight members in total.
Republicans say the new evenly split board will promote bipartisan election administration and consensus. Mr. Cooper and other opponents argue the move will likely lead to election gridlock and severely limit early voting.
The Democrat governor previously vetoed the bill, but Republican state lawmakers, who hold a three-fifths majority in both the House and Senate, voted to override the veto and passed the bill into law.
Mr. Cooper said in the court filing that he needs “sufficient control over administrative bodies that have final executive authority, such as the authority to enforce laws and promulgate rules and regulations, in order to ensure the laws are faithfully executed.”
‘Flagrant Disregard’ for Constitutional Principles
He also accused the North Carolina General Assembly of showing “flagrant disregard for these constitutional principles” and taking “direct aim at established precedents,” and claimed GOP legislative leaders “once again seek to significantly interfere with the Governor’s constitutionally assigned executive branch duty of election law enforcement and to take much of that power for itself.”The measure, he said, also “fails to respect fundamental principles of representative government and the basic guarantees of the North Carolina Constitution, thus requiring the Governor to again secure the constitutional rights of his office and protect the constitutional powers allocated to the executive branch of state government by the people.”
“Like Gollum reaching for the One Ring, legislative defendants are possessed by the power it brings. When it comes to seizing control of the enforcement of the state’s election laws, neither the clear rulings of the Supreme Court nor the overwhelming vote of the people will deter them,” the governor said in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit lists Senate President Pro Tempore Phillip Berger, Speaker of the House Timothy Moore, and the state of North Carolina as defendants.
New Rules to Bolster Election Integrity
A similar proposal that would have overhauled the state’s election boards was rejected by the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2018. It was again rejected by voters in a statewide ballot measure.“Both the Courts and the people have rejected this bad idea and the meaning of our Constitution doesn’t change just because the Supreme Court has new Justices. The Supreme Court should accept the clear precedent and the clear voice of the people and reject the Legislature’s latest attempt to control the election process,” Mr. Cooper said Tuesday announcing the lawsuit.
The General Assembly has not yet commented on the lawsuit, however, the North Carolina Republican Party (NCGOP) last week praised Republicans for successfully overriding Mr. Cooper’s vetoes, adding that the move will “increase confidence and integrity in our elections.”
Overriding the veto of Senate Bill 749 “further increases confidence that our elections will not be administered and adjudicated by hand-picked partisan boards whose allegiance to political party corrupts the fairness of elections administration in North Carolina,” Republican officials said in a statement.
“By establishing truly bipartisan boards of elections, and requiring strong majority votes to approve motions, North Carolinians can be assured that no one political party has an undue advantage when election disputes occur,” NCGOP concluded.
