NC judges block election board changes

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature unlawfully tried to seize from the governor the power to choose elections board members in the battleground state, trial judges ruled while saying portions of a new election law must be permanently blocked.

The three-judge panel sided unanimously with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in his lawsuit filed days after the GOP-controlled General Assembly overrode Cooper’s veto of the measure in October. The changes, which had been set to take effect in January, would have shifted board appointment powers away from the governor and to the legislature.

In late November, the panel temporarily blocked the new structures for the State Board of Elections and boards in all 100 counties from taking effect while Cooper’s lawsuit was heard.

The judges agreed with Cooper’s lawyers, who said that, based on recent court rulings and the state constitution, the new appointments process interferes with a governor’s ability to ensure elections and voting laws are “faithfully executed.”

It’s clear the law “infringes upon the Governor’s constitutional duties” and actions by the GOP legislative leaders “are the most stark and blatant removal of appointment power from the Governor” since state Supreme Court rulings in 2016 and 2018 that favored the state’s chief executive, Superior Court Judges Edwin Wilson, Andrew Womble and Lori Hamilton wrote in the order filed Monday. Hamilton and Womble are both registered Republicans, while Wilson is a Democrat.

The decision means these boards will remain under the previous law’s setup, unless it gets overturned on appeal. Republicans had been encouraged by having won recent high-stakes rulings at the state Supreme Court since it flipped in early 2023 from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 GOP majority.