On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.
Currently, North Carolina’s governor appoints the five members of the state board of elections, allowing him to select a three-person majority from his party. The new law transfers that appointment power to the state auditor. A Republican won control of the state auditor race this fall for the first time in more than a decade.
The bill also changes how local election boards in each of North Carolina’s 100 counties would be appointed. Currently the state board appoints members and the governor appoints the chair. Under the new law, the auditor-appointed state board would still pick the local boards, but the auditor would pick the chair. Taken together, the new law would give Republicans control over both the state and local boards of elections.
Lawsuits are expected challenging the changes, which were tucked into a bill that allocates more than $200m in relief money for Hurricane Helene. The money will not be immediately availableand the funds cannot be spent until the legislature acts again, according to the Associated Press.
The outgoing governor, Roy Cooper, and the incoming governor, Josh Stein, both Democrats, have criticized the measure as a power grab. Republicans are poised to lose their supermajority in the state legislature next year.
“Western North Carolina small businesses and communities still wait for support from the legislature while Republicans make political power grabs the priority. Shameful,” Cooper said in a statement.
The measure also makes significant changes to election procedures. Voters currently have more than a week to provide ID or proof of residence when they vote. The new law shortens that window to just two and a half days and requires local election officials to count provisional ballots more quickly.
That change seems directly in response to a state supreme court election in which the Democrat Allison Riggs trailed her opponent by 10,000 votes on election night but then pulled ahead as more votes were counted. She appears to have won the election by a little over 700 votes.
It also limits Jeff Jackson, the incoming Democratic attorney general, from taking positions contrary to the general assembly and dilutes the governor’s power to fill judicial vacancies.
“Unfortunately, Western North Carolina had to watch as every Republican in the general assembly shamelessly put their desire to strip political power away from recently elected Democrats ahead of the aid and relief their communities need,” Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, said in a statement. “Using the guise of Hurricane Helene relief is a new low, even for general assembly Republicans.”
