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| Bill Aceto, Chair, Watauga BOE |
If an unnoticed (secret!)
new law had passed the NC Senate late in the day on July 1, as it had already passed the NC
House, then any damn thing that Bill Aceto, Chair of the Watauga County Board
of Elections, wanted to impose on Watauga County voters would have been
unchallengable in court.
Snuck into a
"technical corrections" bill, new language was added to G.S. 163‑227.2(g), which governs the implementation of county Early
Voting plans, all of which must be approved (usually rubber-stamped) by the
State Board of Elections.
Currently, G.S.163-22(l) provides that a person seeking judicial review of
any decision
of the
State Board of Elections rendered in the performance of its duties or in the
exercise of its powers under Chapter 163 must file in the Superior Court of
Wake County. This is precisely the route taken by Watauga County citizens in
2014, which resulted in a judicial order that an Early Voting site had to be
restored on the campus of Appalachian State University.
The new, "technical correction" inserted in the law (and
passed by the House but not by the Senate) would provide that any action challenging any
decision of the State Board of Elections regarding the site plan for one-stop voting locations may not
be challenged. Here is the exact wording: "No plan
adopted by the State Board of Elections in the exercise of its supervisory
authority under this subsection may be challenged in a petition for judicial
review"
(http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2015/Bills/Senate/HTML/S821v6.html,
see Section 43.5).
This
piece of skullduggery -- and who do you think it was aimed at, huh? -- passed
the House late on Friday, July 1, but not before the Senate had already
adjourned sine die, and the esteemed
honorables were already pouring their after-work Bourbons.
This
unnoticed episode in attempted subversion of both the people's right to know
and its right to challenge official behavior reveals one fact above all others:
Clearly, the people do have the right
to challenge boards of elections, else why would a law prohibiting such
challenges be deemed necessary?
It
also reveals that Republicans like their subject populations completely without
the instruments of resistance.
3 comments:
So who the hell snuck that language into a technical corrections bill, which is supposed to be non-substantial, non-controversial simple corrections to inadvertent mistakes in legal language? Who the hell is gonna fess up? Jonathan Jordan, was it you? Was the Eggers family somehow involved in getting this done? I bet they were!
Oh so NCGOP wants to suppress the vote and remove any judicial challenge to such suppression. It's appalling. Vote out NCGOP in November....
And Jerry - do see if you can find out who wrote this language into a HB... Jonathan Jordan is obviously no fan of local control.
Neither is Jerry.
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