Republican Power-Grab Aimed at State Board of Elections

 

Phil Berger and other Republican
senators at their press conference
yesterday

Using the trumpian meme of "election integrity" as their excuse, Republican leaders in the NC Senate unveiled S749 yesterday at a press conference in Raleigh, proposing to seize the power the governor has had to appoint members of the State Board of Elections (SBOE) and distribute it to themselves and other members of the General Assembly.

Here's the key part: In a theatrical feint toward "equity" on the SBOE, S749 would put four Republican appointments and four Democratic appointments head-to-head to reach ... what? Stalemate. And who gets to decide when there's 4-4 ties on key issues? Why, the legislators get to step in. Natch.

It's as naked a power grab as we've seen (and we've seen plenty in the last dozen years!).

Their smokescreen is "bipartisanship" but the result will be chaos and gridlock. Senate Majority Leader Paul Newton (whom we wrote about yesterday, down-column) sounded all pious about how "fair" his new law will be: “It’s incontrovertible that we’re living in a time of severe partisan polarization, and that affects voters’ perception of election fairness. When you have an elections board that’s controlled by one party, roughly half of the voters are going to question and doubt the fairness of the elections — and, in some cases, the outcome.”

Translation: Republicans believe that the only time they lose elections is when the Democrats use massive fraud. That's their fantasy. And now they're writing laws to fulfill that delusion.