Judicial Watch: Judge Temporarily Blocks Elections Board Changes
A Superior Court Judge has temporarily blocked implementation of the new state law abolishing the State Board of Elections and merging its functions into a new agency overseeing elections, state officials’ ethics, and lobbying.
Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens held an abbreviated hearing Friday on the temporary restraining order request by attorneys for then Governor-elect Roy Cooper to put that part of SB 4 on hold until the Court could rule on their claim that the law is an unconstitutional infringement by the legislature on the governor’s executive authority. Stephens issued the restraining order to keep that part of the bill from going into effect on January 1, and set a more complete hearing on the request for the morning of Thursday, January 5. He agreed with the plaintiff’s contentions that the claim was likely to win on its merits, and that the dissolution of the Elections Board would have constituted “irreparable harm” to the fair administration of elections in the meantime. The claims will ultimately be decided by a special three-judge panel to be created by the Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court, but Stephens agreed with the contention that he had the authority to act to stop the challenged provision from going into effect prior to the creation and convening of such a panel.
As discussed last week in CIB, the change in elections oversight was part of a broader bill stripping multiple powers from the incoming Democratic governor to maintain as much power as possible within the legislative branch still under Republican control. While citizen groups like NCLCV are not concerned with party control, we are concerned about the relevant major policy differences. New Governor Cooper supports broad registration and voting opportunities, while the current General Assembly leadership continues to press for limiting early voting, ending same-day registration and voting, and placing new obstacles such as restrictive photo-identification requirements in the path of voters.
Unfortunately, the details of SB 4 regarding elections management would guarantee that the more restrictive view of voting opportunities would prevail. The law would require that 6 of the 8 members of the new state elections board, or any county board, support an action before it was taken. That would effectively give the General Assembly leadership’s voter-suppression views a veto over any election board decision. In the absence of action to the contrary by an election board, early voting would be defaulted to the minimum required by state statute: just one early voting site per county, open only during weekday business hours and a single Saturday before an election. Since most votes in North Carolina are now cast during early voting (especially by Democrats and independents), this would have a massive voter suppression impact.
The immediate impact on the oversight under which the special 2017 elections would be held would be even more one-sidedly partisan. SB 4 (if the courts allow it to go into effect) would make the members of the current state ethics commission (all appointed by the legislature or McCrory) the governing board for the conduct of elections in North Carolina through June 30. (That period will include most planning and preparation for the 2017 voting.) Just Friday, McCrory appointed the former general counsel for the state Republican Party to chair that commission. Under the law, the new Gov. Cooper would be barred from changing any of those appointments.
Attorneys for Cooper told the Court that they expected to add additional issues challenging other parts of the new law to the lawsuit next week. The emergency restraining order request dealt only with the provisions that were scheduled to go into effect January 1 regarding the Board of Elections.
