Campaign Watch: What’s Up with Elections Boards?
The NC Supreme Court has thrown out as unconstitutional a set of legislative changes to the boards which conduct elections in North Carolina, while the legislature just passed more changes. Why do we still not have a working state elections board for the 2018 elections, and what’s happening in the meantime?
Last month, the NC Supreme Court ruled that the General Assembly could not take away the Governor’s inherent constitutional authority to control who runs executive agency functions like the state elections board. The Court sent a contrary ruling by the lower state Appeals Court back down for further action, in keeping with that ruling. The Supreme Court’s full action and reasoning can be read here.
Just last week, the General Assembly approved yet another tweak to its legislation rewriting operation of the state elections management apparatus. This latest change is plainly part of the legislature’s ongoing attempt to keep effective control of those operations away from a governor with which it disagrees on issues like expanded early voting and legislative attempts to suppress voter turnout.
While the composition and control of the state-level election board is being hammered out, operations of the 100 county-level election boards remain frozen under the boards which existed at the beginning of Cooper’s term of office in January 2017. For the most part, therefore, effective control of the state’s elections process decisions continues to be in the hands of appointees of the previous governor, Pat McCrory. That is despite the fact that the state is more than a year into the term of the current governor, and candidate filing is already underway for the critical 2018 legislative elections.
At this point, it is still uncertain when the Appeals Court panel will make its rulings on the case sent back by the Supreme Court, or what that panel will decide. Whatever the Appeals Court panel’s order says, a subsequent request for further intervention by the Supreme Court seems likely.
For a good, more detailed overview of this process so far, and why it matters to elections in North Carolina, see this article by Associated Press reporter Gary Robertson.
Citizen conservation advocates continue to be concerned with the outcome of these decisions because of their potential to impact how easy (or difficult) it is for North Carolina citizens to exercise their right to vote. Conservation advocates believe that the most effective way for the public to demand clean air and water is to elect more pro-environment candidates to the offices which control environmental laws and programs. Only broad access to the right to vote makes that possible.
