Three Watauga Voters Sue to Intervene in Civitas Attempt to Throw Out Same-Day Voters

On July 29, 2016, the Fourth Circuit ordered the State Board of Elections to reinstate North Carolina’s same-day registration process, which permits voters to fill out a voter registration form and cast a ballot in the same trip to the polls during the early voting period only.

More than 90,000 North Carolinians used the same-day registration process in this election. On November 21, nearly four months after the Fourth Circuit reinstated same-day registration and 13 days after the November 8 general election was conducted, Art Pope's henchman Francis DeLuca of the Civitas Institute filed suit in federal court challenging those same-day voters in a transparent bid to bollix up the election so that the NC General Assembly could step in and declare Pat McCrory the winner.

Here's what DeLuca asked the court to do, in a nutshell: Spend an additional 30 days total doing two different verification mailings to all voters who used same-day registration, waiting 15 days after each mailing to determine whether those mailings would be returned as undeliverable, thus (Mr. DeLuca hopes) throwing out those votes. DeLuca also asked that even the ballots cast by those same-day registrants for whom mailings are not returned as undeliverable and whose registrations are deemed complete under the statutory process -- that their ballots not be counted until the 30-day period has elapsed.

Delay, delay, delay the inevitable of scooting Governor McCrory's puling carcass out of the Mansion, and hoping in the meantime that the general public will be convinced that something nefarious had gone on for Roy Cooper to win. (People hear that "dead people voted" without pausing also to understand that they're talking about people who cast a ballot in early voting and who subsequently died and whose ballots are not counted, according to law. People believe what they want to believe, and Republicans are in luv with any hint of fraud, furiously projecting their own dark hearts onto the rest of us.)

As of yesterday, there is a counter lawsuit filed on behalf of three Watauga County voters to intervene in the DeLuca suit and asking the court to dismiss it. The three Wataugans are voters who used same-day registration to register and vote in the November 2016 general election. Due to no fault of their own, they failed the mail verification process (that is, had at least one mailing returned as undeliverable), but they are eligible voters. Should DeLuca obtain the "relief" he seeks, these three voters would have their votes discounted and be deprived of their fundamental right to vote, in direct violation of their Fourteenth Amendment rights.

You can read the intervenor's counter-suit here. The description of the three Watauga intervenors begins at the bottom of page six.