HOW NORTH CAROLINA’S REPUBLICANS ARE FIGHTING DEMOCRACY
March 23, 2017
Is North Carolina a Preview of What’s to Come?
Moral Monday protest in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photo credit: Pilar Timpane / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
A war is heating up in North Carolina about the right to vote, and the political future of the state. The Wake County Superior Court found recently that the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s “power grab” last December to strip the incoming Democratic governor of his authority was unconstitutional, violating the state’s strictly defined separation of powers.
The ruling overturned the General Assembly’s plans to force the new governor to keep appointed holdovers from the former governor, Republican Pat McCrory, and it struck down the Republicans’ plans for restructuring the State Board of Elections (SBE).
The Republicans intended for the SBE to no longer have a majority of its members — at either the state or county level — belong to the governor’s party, for all decisions to be decided by supermajority consent, and, essentially, for Republicans to head the state and county boards on election years.
