Because Dallas Woodhouse Wasn't Enough

 

State Auditor and Elections Czar Dave Boliek found and then lost a good hatchet-wielder in Dallas Woodhouse, who once installed as Mr. Boliek's so-called "liaison" to county boards began to break furniture for the sake of limiting voting opportunities for at least two groups, college students and Black voters. Woodhouse recently resigned after his activities came to light, mainly when a Republican Board of Elections member from Jackson County spilled the beans.

This same Mr. Boliek has now grabbed for the new money that the Republican bosses put into the state budget for him, funds to hire 25 new staffers, which Boliek intends to make "at will political" appointees. Boliek notified Senate and House leaders (Messrs. Berger and Hall) on 7/27. That notification starts a clock ticking in the General Assembly. By statute, lawmakers have 30 days to object. If they do nothing, Mr. Boliek's project of surrounding himself with flying monkeys becomes a bigger reality. Boliek will have a total of 50 political drones in his department.

Guilford Co BOE Nixes Campus Early Voting at A&T and UNC-Greensboro

 

Four Eggers, Member, SBOE

 

Joining the Republican rush to discourage college-student voting in North Carolina, the Guilford County Board of Elections, with its Republican majority (plus one Democrat arrrrg!), passed its early voting plan, which took away General Election early voting sites previously available at North Carolina A&T and at UNC-Greensboro. The meeting was packed with students who remained quiet and respectful (for the most part) through a dirty deed that took less than 30 minutes. One person did yell out during the discussion about campus voting, “You don’t care about these people!” And was escorted out.

The vote of the board was 4-1, meaning one Democrat broke with her fellow party appointee and voted with the Republicans. Because the vote was not unanimous -- a tic in North Carolina election law -- it must now go for final resolution to the State Board of Elections (SBOE), where men like Four Eggers and Francis DeLuca and Bob Rucho will fer shore nix the campuses. The boss of these SBOE bosses, State Auditor Dave Boliek, is already well known as the vote suppressor supreme. It's a perfect circle of life, if life is like an anaconda. The NCGOP now owns access to the polls, an ambition they've had for decades.

The Democrat who voted yesterday with the Republicans is Felita Regina Donnell, a retired revenue agent for the IRS, a graduate of A&T, executive board member of the Greensboro NAACP, past president of the African American Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party, past president of Guilford County Democratic Women, and a former member of the North Carolina Democratic Party's Council of Review. I would call her a big deal in the Party. Who just left a gaping wound in the side of Democracy.

 

Watauga's Own "Four" Eggers Shuts Down Investigation into Dallas Woodhouse's Voter Suppression Activities

 

Photo Jesse Barber

 

Last Thursday, with Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") presiding over the State Board of Elections (SBOE), Jeff Carmon, one of two Democratic members, spoke about the allegations that preceded Dallas Woodhouse's resignation as Auditor Dave Boliek's enforcer ("liaison") to all county boards, going over and around the actual staff at the SBOE. It had become well established that Woodhouse was behind orders in some specific counties advising the closing of early voting at college campuses and an end to Sunday voting in Black communities.

“Given the seriousness of these allegations and the public attention that they have generated, I believe we have an obligation to establish a complete and factual record,” Carmon said. “At this stage, I believe the board has little choice but to subpoena Mr. Woodhouse so that he may answer questions under oath.”

Eggers was horrified and shut that shit down quickly, refused to allow a vote on a subpoena for Woodhouse, arguing hilariously that it would be inappropriate to go after Woodhouse now because he's resigned his job and is a private citizen. What? When Carmon pointed out that Woodhouse's official actions were the point, not his private behavior, Eggers retreated to a threat, warning Carmon that he'd better "drop it," before the Republican majority called for investigating people who ran the SBOE for Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. (Will Doran, WRAL)

This is the same Four Eggers who secretly directed efforts to suppress the college vote in Watauga in 2013 after his younger brother was installed as the chair of the Watauga BOE. Bertrand Gutierrez scooped that scandal for the Winston-Salem Journal, and I used up a lot of bandwidth writing about Mr. Eggers and his attempt to change the entire landscape of voting in Watauga County. The first meeting of the Watauga BOE after the Republicans took over, August 12, 2013, a huge crowd had been alerted that something bad was about to go down. The meeting room was standing room only, so they moved to the main courtroom. The Republican majority proceeded to pass a dozen or more "resolutions" (changes in policy) that were proven later by digital thumbprint to have been ghost-written by the chair's big brother Four. One of those resolutions closed early voting at AppState. That meeting, with that crowd, became a raucous circus of protest, with cat-calling and boos. The lone Democratic member of the Watauga BOE said damn twice, and it was captured on video. The Civitas people alleged that the Democratic member "cursed through the whole meeting." An exaggeration that nevertheless summarizes adequately the vibe of that day.

That decision to close AppState early voting, on appeal, was upheld by the SBOE, also Republican majority at that time. A non-profit, the Watauga County Voting Rights Taskforce, and individual plaintiffs, sued in Wake Superior Court to restore the student union site. On October 13, 2014, literally on the eve of the start of early voting for the fall elections of 2014, the senior resident judge Donald Stephens issued a sharply worded decision declaring the Watauga BOE's shutdown at AppState "arbitrary and capricious." The next morning, and just as quickly as the judge had ruled, the staff of the Watauga BOE was set up in the student union and ready for early voting. We were first in line. And we've had early voting on the AppState campus ever since because a judge ordered it. (Q. Does a judge's order have a limited lifespan? How is that determined?)

Couldn't do it in Watauga in 2014. But willing to let Dallas Woodhouse do it in 2026. Same "Four" Eggers.

 

You Think That Rearranging Furniture at the SBOE Absolves It of Corruption? Dallas Woodhouse Still Works There!

 

NC Voices

 

The cover story Dave Boliek put out in September 2025 about hiring Dallas Woodhouse as some sort of State Board of Elections (SBOE) "liaison," whose role, we would soon discover -- to absolutely no one's surprise -- was actually to lord it over county boards of elections and inhibit college-age and Black voters wherever possible. At the time of Woodhouse's hiring, Boliek announced him to county election officials: "[I hired] him to assist in your efforts to ensure election integrity while encouraging maximum participation in our elections." Hahahahaha

The best reporting I've seen on the Woodhouse "reassignment" at the SBOE, the piece below, is thorough and complete. I don't know who wrote it, but thank you!

And if you're a partisan like me and tempted to celebrate the mere rearrangement of furniture at the SBOE -- window-dressing for a corrupt and exposed operation -- I would advise you not to. Dallas Woodhouse is still there at the SBOE, along with his embedded philosophy of might-makes-right, and trailing all that heavy baggage of cut-throat politics. You think the people who hired Woodhouse and who now obviously depend on him to be there have changed their spots? This isn't a victory, but it exposed their corruption. 

RALEIGH -- By WRAL News  A North Carolina Republican operative who was hired by the state auditor to help shape the state’s election boards and early voting plans has been reassigned, and his election liaison position has been discontinued. 

State and county elections officials are beginning to ramp up preparations for the 2026 midterm elections. Mail-in ballots will go out in September, early voting starts in October and election day is Nov. 3.

State Auditor Dave Boliek reassigned Dallas Woodhouse, a former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, NBC News reported Wednesday morning. Woodhouse had served in the role since September.

“Now that we are more than a year past appointments, and board chairs have settled into their roles having worked through a municipal election, primary election, and most of the local boards have passed early voting plans for the general election, the Auditor's Office has discontinued the elections liaison role,” a spokesman for the auditor’s office told WRAL in a statement Wednesday. “The elections liaison was established because the Auditor's Office gained new responsibilities. The position was not meant to be permanent.”

Woodhouse will work on strategic initiatives that relate to constituent services and communications, according to the spokesman.

Republican state lawmakers stripped responsibility for overseeing state and county election boards away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein in 2024 and gave the power to Boliek, a Republican. Under Boliek and Woodhouse, the state board of elections and all 100 county election boards have switched to GOP majorities, and some have begun enacting longtime Republican priorities such as eliminating early voting options on Sundays — a popular day with Black voters and on college campuses. Black voters and students tend to vote Democratic.

According to reporting from WLOS and NC Local, Woodhouse and Boliek were involved in efforts to ensure the new Jackson County Board of Elections would shut down a polling place on campus at Western Carolina University. In the Triangle, the Wake County Board of Elections also recently voted to eliminate a longtime early voting site at N.C. State’s student union, and to move it to a remote part of campus, WRAL previously reported.

Woodhouse was reassigned on June 2, NBC News reported. Woodhouse earns $110,000, according to a database of state employee salaries.

In September, Boliek wrote to some county election officials that “to assist in your efforts to ensure election integrity while encouraging maximum participation in our elections, I have appointed Dallas Woodhouse as my liaison.”

Woodhouse referred a request for comment Wednesday to the auditor’s office.

 

Josh Stein Still Fighting for Control of SBOE. Bless Him!

 

Dallas Woodhouse

Gov. Josh Stein is suing the GOP-controlled General Assembly over its last-minute seizure of the State Board of Elections, which they gave lock-stock-and-barrel to their new bestie, Dave Boliek, the brand new State Auditor and conservative fan boy. ("There's no fanatic like a new convert.") The General Assembly pulled off the blatant power grab between Josh Stein's landslide victory over Mark Robinson on November 5th, 2024, and the swearing in of Josh Stein as our 76th governor on January 1st, 2025. Now that's hustling for any deliberative body (maybe not so much for one in lockstep like the Berger/Moore congregation was).

Very shortly after Stein whupped Robinson, GOP lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 382, cleverly attaching Hurricane Helene relief to their plan to sneak in provisions stripping the governor's control of the State Board of Elections, among other things. (They also took powers from Attorney General Jeff Jackson and other members of the Council of State.) Gov. Cooper, still in office, vetoed S 382. Republicans overrode. Immediately, the new czar of elections, Dave Boliek, hires extreme partisan Republican hit-man Dallas Woodhouse to "teach" local county boards of election how best to suppress the vote. The very recent elimination of three university polling sites testifies to Woodhouse's malign presence. 

Of course Stein took it to court, and he won at the trial court level. A panel of three superior court judges agreed that the section of S 382 taking powers from the executive was unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals -- dominated 12-3 by Republicans -- quickly stepped in and blocked that ruling, allowing the law to take effect on May 1st.

Stein is right now back in court asking a new panel of Appeals Court judges to overturn previous court orders that allowed Boliek to take over elections board appointments last spring.

Kyle Ingram was there in court February 10th -- yesterday -- to hear the arguments, and he captured the essential gist:

Attorneys for Stein argued that the power shift — which transferred appointments to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek — sets a dangerous precedent for separation of powers, wherein the legislature can consistently reassign responsibilities to whichever executive office holder agrees with their policy preferences.

“The legislative position is that there are no limits on their power to assign executive duties on the Council of State,” Eric Fletcher, a lawyer for Stein, said. “They say that they can assign, tomorrow, election administration to the Commissioner of Agriculture. That they can send agricultural policy to the Commissioner of Insurance. And they can assign road-building to the Superintendent of Public Instruction.” 

Attorneys for legislative leaders argued that it was within the General Assembly’s duty to reassign executive powers as they please, so long as the powers in question are not explicitly assigned in the constitution.

The three judges hearing the arguments: John Arrowood (D), Valerie Zachary (R), and April Wood (R). Wanna guess how invested in partisanship those two Republican judges are?

Political Notes -- "Fuck It" Edition

 

Kate Barr, the "Can't Win but Fuck It!" political influencer who has made a second career out of encouraging Democratic candidates to file in districts they can't possibly win -- as an act of revolutionary defiance against Republican gerrymandering -- has announced a new tactic: Can't win as a Democrat? File as a Republican and run a primary against the pasty-assed Tim Moore in Congressional District 14, a safe seat he mapped for himself when he was running the House. It was specifically and quite publicly drawn for him, a lucrative landing pad after Speaker of the NCHouse (which was also a notoriously lucrative perch for Moore -- and don't make me go look up all the investigative pieces exposing his corruption).

Barr told the WashPost, “My message is really about fairness. And it’s consistent with when I ran for state senate district 37 in ‘24,” she said. “We need fair maps. We deserve fair elections. We, as voters, should be able to hold our elected leaders accountable. And it is wrong that we can’t.”

Dave Boliek, the rubberstamp
for suppression of the vote in NC

On Friday, reporter Bryan Anderson broke the news that Paul Cox, General Counsel to the State Board of Elections, resigned his job, citing the highly partisan nature of the new board under Republican control. Guys as extreme as Francis X. DeLuca, former president of the Civitas Institute, and Robert Rucho, former Republican state senator with too many axes to grind, and their new boss, State Auditor Dave Boliek, a former reactionary Democrat with much to prove to his new Republican masters, not to mention the ineffable Dallas Woodhouse, appointed by Boliek to "oversee" county boards of elections -- all of that became too much for a lawyer with professional integrity which was itself based on an understanding that the administration of elections cannot become a partisan battleground, which would violate the statutory mandate of the Board of Elections. Ever since the Berger/Moore General Assembly took the Board of Elections away from Gov. Stein and gave it to the newly minted MAGA Republican Dave Boliek, we've always known what was afoot and what was indubitably ahead of us, ahead of anyone who wants to insure the voting rights and ballot access of all citizens. Paul Cox set a flare over the ice berg's drift.

In January of 2024, an Avery County man named William J. Barthel attended a special meeting of the Avery County Commish, stood at the back of the room so he wouldn't obstruct anybody's sightline, and unfurled a banner which made crude comments about the Commish's clerk, Cindy Turbyfill. The sheriff's department immediately descended on Barthel, told him to take the banner down; he refused; the commish chair told him he had to leave. At which point Barthel, who had been totally silent up to that point, asked "Why do I have to leave?" I'm exercising my constitutional rights. He was uncooperative which led to his handcuffing outside the courtroom. He was charged with disrupting an official meeting and with resisting arrest. After being convicted in Avery District Court, he appealed to the Superior Court and got a two-day trial with a jury before Judge Gavenus. Again, he was convicted, sentenced to 30 days, suspended for 18 months of supervised probation. 

Cohen v. California (1971)
ruled that this banner was free speech

A panel of the NC Court of Appeals just reversed all of that: "[Barthel] argues that the First Amendment protects his silent display of a crude banner criticizing [Cindy Turbyfill] at a board meeting. We agree. The First Amendment shielded his right to stand silently at the back of the boardroom with his vulgar banner during the public comment period. Because his arrest was unlawful, Defendant had the right to resist it without using excessive force. He used reasonable force. We therefore vacate both convictions." Republican Judge Donna Stroud wrote the opinion. Chief Judge Chris Dillon and Judge Fred Gore, two other Republicans, concurred.

I'm deliberately not reprinting here what Barthel's banner said (let alone his highly-offensive-to-many T-shirt), but if you click the link in the previous paragraph, you can read it for yourself in the Appeals Court order. I laughed out loud. And then I had to start googling. The court identified Turbyfill as a commissioner. She's not. She's clerk to the board and also assistant county manager. There's obviously a juicy story behind Barthel's grudge against her. Maybe someone in Avery who reads here will enlighten us.

Wormwood*

 

We get why Dallas Woodhouse has been installed as the czar of "election integrity," and you should understand it too, because it means nothing good for the opposition to the Raleigh junta. Woodhouse's projected role is spelled out in this chilling sentence contained in the 3rd paragraph of Auditor Dave Boliek's memo to members of county boards of election:

As we have many new chairs, Mr. Woodhouse will soon coordinate a series of training events to assist you in your new role.

(The full text of Boliek's memo has not been readily available. Parts of it have been widely quoted, though not that sentence, and I couldn't find the full memo anywhere on the state Auditor's website. Anderson Alerts published the full text, which I'm indebted to here.)

What will a Dallas Woodhouse "training" of new BOE chairs look like? Keep in mind that those newly appointed and highly partisan Republican chairs are new because Phil Berger and his pals in the General Assembly were desperate to take over the administration of voting in this state, which they did by completely changing the law to take appointment power away from the governor, giving it instead to the newly elected state Auditor Dave Boliek.

I can forecast the not-so-subtle marching orders in those Woodhouse trainings: "You're Republicans, and you've been put in charge of early voting and everything else related to ballot access for a reason. We expect you to be loyal Republicans. We expect you to do what you can to limit the access of people who'll likely vote against us. Do you understand me?" 

Woodhouse must be salivating at the opportunity.

If the current State Board of Elections with its 3-2 Republican majority allows these Woodhouse trainings to go forward, then they are as craven cowards as the US Congress. No one should be in charge of that training other than the board members and their legal counsel. I'm looking squarely at you, Four Eggers. Do something!

Those Woodhouse trainings had better by GAWD be advertised and open to the public, not to mention the press.

*In the Bible, wormwood refers to the bitter Artemisia plant, symbolizing extreme bitterness, poison, sorrow, and suffering. It is used to depict God's judgment and warnings of divine wrath against sin and injustice, as seen in the Old Testament prophecies of Jeremiah and Amos, and in the New Testament Book of Revelations. In Revelations, a star called Wormwood falls, turning waters bitter and poisonous, illustrating widespread calamity and death.

Apparently, Dallas Woodhouse Gives Stacy "Four" Eggers the Heebie-Jeebies

 

Woodhouse

I asked the question recently: How does State Board of Elections (SBOE) member Four Eggers feel about the appointment of Dallas Woodhouse as the "election integrity czar," seemingly above and over the heads of the duly designated SBOE board.

I believe we got at least a partial answer in the heated yelling match that broke out during a discussion of Woodhouse's appointment at a SBOE meeting last Tuesday. (I tried to tune in via WebEx, but problems with over-talking and the sound system made listening not only a challenge but a sheer pain. So I have to go with what's reported by Lynn Bonner on NCNewsline.)

After Democratic member Siobhan Millen began the discussion of Woodhouse's appointment -- “It’s difficult to imagine a person who would be less suited to bringing election integrity…” -- SBOE Chair Francis DeLuca "began to shout over Millen as she criticized Woodhouse’s hiring."

Once the shouting died down, Eggers spoke and appeared to side with the two Democrats, though gingerly, like a cowboy trying to gentle a wild horse: “Our county board members should take direction from this board,” Eggers said. "It’s clear that the board retains legal, technical, and supervisory oversight over elections."

But maybe, Eggers added, "Woodhouse might be helpful in securing funding from the legislature."

Hahahahaha

Oh, Woodhouse is going to be useful all right, but not for more funding.

Dallas Woodhouse Now in Charge of Election Integrity in North Carolina

 

Woodhouse

News came last week that the state Auditor Dave Boliek, the newly established Republican overlord of voting in North Carolina, appointed Dallas Woodhouse to a special role enforcing "election integrity" (the code word) via "election policy and proper oversight." What exactly that "oversight" means, especially considering Woodhouse's history and the clear undertow of Republican ambitions to limit voting ahead of the midterms rather than encouraging it, has many progressives and independents alike very concerned.

Who the Hell Is Dallas Woodhouse?

Woodhouse is famous as a hard-charging Republican operative with a history of chair-flinging partisanship. Ahead of the 2014 senatorial contest between Thom Tillis and Kay Hagan, Woodhouse created a 501(c)(4), Carolina Rising, ostensibly under IRS rules as a tax exempt "social welfare" org, but most of the $4.9 million he raised went to a single political media firm in Virginia for ads mentioning Thom Tillis favorably. Carolina Rising listed a single anonymous donor for all that money. The donor later turned out to be Karl Rove's super-PAC, Crossroads GPS. Complaints were filed with the IRS that Carolina Rising was clearly a partisan operation. I don't know if anything substantive came of those complaints. Probably not. (On the night of Tillis's election in 2014, Woodhouse appeared before cameras famously and slurringly quite inebriated, bragging that he had spent well over $4 million to get Tillis elected. That video may still be on YouTube.)

In October of 2015 Woodhouse was hired as executive director of the NCGOP. In that role, in August of 2016 Woodhouse famously sent an email to all Republican members of county boards of election reminding them that with Pat McCrory as governor, they had the power to manipulate early voting plans for "Party-line" outcomes. Both McCrory and Donald Trump would be on the ballot that fall, and Woodhouse was doing his due diligence to manufacture wins for those guys by helping to suppress Democratic votes where possible, particularly Sunday voting favored by many Black churches, and student voting, facilitated by polling places on college campuses. McCrory lost but Trump won that year, so partial success for Woodhouse's team.

After Woodhouse stepped down from executive director of the NCGOP in 2019 -- damaged flotsam from the bribery scandal involving party Chair Robin Hayes (Woodhouse was never implicated) -- he joined both the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute as a paid consultant/staffer. Those two influential North Carolina purveyors of big-money conservative orthodoxy kept Woodhouse in the inner-circle of the Republican establishment. The old Tea Party types, best represented by the opinion stylings of Brant Clifton at the Daily Haymaker, don't like him, don't trust him, especially after Woodhouse managed to oust Hasan Harnett from the GOP chairmanship less than a year into his term).

(Use the search engine, top left, for many more instances and details recorded on this blog during the last decade for assuming that Woodhouse's appointment as overseer/enforcer of voting rights statewide will mean an open field day for suppressing the Democratic vote everywhere possible, all the time, forever.)

How Do the Republican Members of the State's BOE Feel About Woodhouse's Appointment?

Dunno. But I can speculate. 

There are three Republican members of the SBOE, all appointed by the aforementioned Dave Boliek in his new role as Elections Czar: 

Stacy "Four" Eggers IV from Watauga; 

Ex-Senator and Yankee transplant Robert Rucho, who can justifiably wear the label of "wacky right-wing hothead." DeLuca had a huge hand in fashioning the "Monster Voting Law" in 2013, which was soon defeated in court for suppressing the vote of Black citizens; 

Francis X. DeLuca, a one-time congressional candidate and former boss of Art Pope's right-wing Civitas Institute -- the org which, according to NCNewsline, "has long and passionately championed dozens of extreme (and sometimes downright strange) causes," including suppressing access to voting in the interests of "election intrigrity."

I've been listening to SBOE meetings via Webex. Most recently I heard Chair DeLuca suggest that Federal elections law (the HAVA Act) is probably "insane." He had just been told, in fact reassured by SBOE legal counsel, that the procedures by which the SBOE is repairing the missing data from several thousand voter registrations is entirely by the book and according to the law). Robert Rucho had complained that the law wasn't strict enough and implied that all sorts of fraud is going on all the time.

How does Four Eggers feel about the appointment of Dallas Woodhouse, and how is Eggers parsing who gets to demand what? Boliek's memo appointing Woodhouse implied but didn't spell out that Woodhouse has some sort of fiat over not only the county boards but the SBOE itself. Is Eggers going to bend the knee to an "election intrigrity compliance dictator" who's been put in above him and the SBOE? What are the legal ramifications when Woodhouse goes mucking about with 2024 early voting plans that include polling sites on college campuses?

 

Update on the Attempt To Suppress Voting in NC

 

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBOE) announced last month that it would be sending mailers to roughly 194,000 N.C. residents, directing them to update their voter registration information -- ultimate fall-out from the never-ending NC Supreme Court election involving one Jefferson Griffin and his accusations of illegitimacy against voters who were missing that information, and then the inevitable piling on of Trump's strong-arm enforcer (a.k.a. Dept. of Justice), which sued the SBOE.

Starting in 2013, NC’s voter registration form unintentionally appeared to make filling out a driver’s license number or Social Security number optional. Many registered in good faith using those faulty forms. In 2023, the SBOE fixed its form. But Pam Bondi demands that all incomplete registrants must be updated with missing info. Hence, an explanatory demand mailer going out now from the SBOE to a first batch of 103,270 North Carolina voters.

Bryan Anderson with the help of WCU prof Chris Cooper sussed out some statistics. While the average age of a North Carolina voter is 51.4 years, the average age of the voters with incomplete registrations is 38.9 years. (Anderson reminds us that it makes sense that people who registered with faulty forms during that 10-year span -- 2013-2023 -- are likely to be younger than the average voter.)

Of the first batch of 103,270 voters who need to cure their registrations, 63% are Unaffiliated, 23% are Democrat, 14% are Republican.

How an Ulcerated Board of Elections (Mis)Behaves

 

Four Eggers

Video surfaced of the grim closing moments of yesterday's meeting of the new State Board of Elections. "New" in the hair-raising sense that it's now and very suddenly dominated by a 3-2 Republican majority (counting Watauga's Four Eggers) --  all appointed by a newly elected Republican hack Council of State member, Auditor Dave Boliek, just because the Republicans in the General Assembly still have a lot of revenge flowing through their capillaries, and they love torturing our new Democratic governor.

The moment the video memorializes is immediately after the Republican majority has terminated the employment of SBOE Exec. Dir. Karen Brinson Bell, who has run the operation only since June 2019 and who has been attacked by right-wing election deniers as a partisan Democratic operator, which is absurd. By every metric Brinson Bell was even-handed and above-board, and I might remind the election deniers that it was under her six years directing elections that Republicans maintained and extended their hegemony in the General Assembly. (I realize the tit-for-tat history behind Brinson Bell's appointment in 2019: The Democratic majority summarily fired the Republican Exec. Dir. at the time, Kim Strach, who had also been a fair and even-handed administrator (IMO). So I get the revenge, even though I don't believe in it.

So ... teeing up the video ... Brinson Bell has just been fired. One of the Republicans quickly moves for adjournment, and Brinson Bell requests a minute of their time to make a comment on her tenure as executive director. Instead of saying a gentlemanly "sure you may speak!" Four Eggers quickly seconds the motion to adjourn, and the Republican members all stalk out, like milk cows going to stall, while Brinson Bell begins reading her statement.

Worried that blindly and maliciously partisan drones have taken over the administration of voting and of voters and of elections in North Carolina? You bet I'm worried. Here's a very serious open question involving the barest operation of any imagination: What would have happened in the Jefferson Griffin v. Allison Riggs case if the Four Eggers crowd had been in control the whole time? When Griffin first started his bizarre legal theorizing -- that elections can be overturned by rewriting the rules later -- he made his argument about throwing out 60,000+ ballots first to the State Board of Elections -- 3-2 Democratic at the time -- which quickly rejected Griffin's arguments as belonging in the "You've Got To Be Kidding Me!" bin. 

NCGOP's Wet Dream of Controlling Elections Becomes Real

 

Four Eggers
Photo Jesse Barber

Four Eggers is so proud.

After a 3-judge panel of Superior Court judges ruled the Republicans' elections takeover law unconstitutional last week, three anonymous Court of Appeals judges (Jefferson Griffin rumored to be one of them, so there's a possible explanation for the secrecy) on Wednesday set that lower-court ruling aside (in an unsigned two-sentence ruling that offered no legal reasoning whatsoever) and completely green-lit the takeover of the State Board of Elections by a Republican hack, Dave Boliek, the new state Auditor.

What had once been the right of the duly elected governor to appoint the members of the State Board is now a part of the portfolio of a totally inexperienced but highly partisan official who is guaranteed to please his GOP bosses. The decision came from the Court of Appeals with no oral arguments, no public explanation or discussion, and no acknowledgment that this appallingly partisan decision has been previously considered unconstitutional by numerous courts who have understood a power grab when they saw it.

Yesterday, the new elections czar Boliek immediately appointed the three most partisan Republicans he was told to appoint, including the notorious Watauga County attorney Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") as the voting majority on the board. Boliek will also be privileged to appoint the chairs of all county boards, which are guaranteed to also turn majority Republican.

In addition to the travesty of judicial over-reach, we can now look forward to early voting plans that intentionally disable voting blocs disfavored by Eggers and his chums, among other mischief. There is also worry, naturally, that the new GOP power structure will find a way to award that Supreme Court seat to Jefferson Griffin.

Republicans Violated the State Constitution in Stripping Power From Gov. Stein

 

Dave Boliek.
He wants to run elections in North Carolina

Immediately after last November's election and before newly elected Gov. Josh Stein could be sworn in, the Berger/Moore General Assembly quickly passed Senate Bill 382 which transfers governance of the State Board of Elections to the office of the State Auditor. Surprise! The newly elected State Auditor is one Dave Boliek, a brand new Republican who used to be a Democrat (leastways, on paper) up until 2023. Boliek, who has earned a living as a lawyer, said that Donald J. Trump had "inspired" him to switch teams.

Under S 382, Dave Boliek would run the State Board of Elections, appointing all five members and all the chairs of all the county boards of elections. That promises nothing good for counties like Watauga and Wake and Mecklenburg and Guilford and Cumberland, and is only the latest of a long string of attempts by the GOP to take over the administration and management of elections in North Carolina. It is their North Star, the be-all of absolute power. Every other attempt has failed in the courts; one attempt, a state referendum to change the Constitution, got voted down by the people. Then came S 382.

Long story super-short, the Governor sued, arguing that S 382 violated separation of powers. Yesterday, a three-judge panel of Wake County Superior Court judges ruled 2-1 that S 382 is "facially" unconstitutional. "On its face," they know it's stupid.

The 2-judge majority on the panel included one registered Democrat, one Republican. The lone dissenter is Republican. He evidently thinks the General Assembly's power to jerk the Governor around is virtually unlimited. But because of his dissent, an appeal can go to the Court of Appeals, with its super-majority of Republican judges. The whole thing, we know, will end up at the Supremes, which is where Rumplestiltskin gets gold out of straw. 

Why would I want my voting rights in the hands of people whose first instinct is to squeeze down on ballot-access, to make it as difficult as possible for some sorts of people to vote, to drain the registration pool of unwanted participation? No thanks!

What's Going On With the NC Supreme Court Race?

 

Why is this man smiling?

Incumbent Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs beat Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin for her seat on the NC Supreme Ct by 734 votes-- Riggs's winning margin after two recounts. Republican Griffin wouldn't and won't concede, has exhausted his appeals to the NC State Board of Elections, and is now petitioning the Paul Newby Supreme Court (on which Justice Riggs still sits but who immediately recused herself from the Griffin suit) to stay the election on the grounds that some 60,000 voters had cast illegal votes. Griffin alleges that those 60,000 registrations are illegal because the registration forms are missing important data.

The idea of using incomplete voter registration as an excuse for throwing out votes seems to have been hatched in a secret group chat in July of 2024 involving the highest echelons of election denialism in North Carolina. So said ProPublica, which somehow or other obtained a recording of that phone call (or Zoom meetup or whatever it was) and spilled the beans just before Christmas that this is what happened back in...

July 2024 -- The call involving the so-called Election Integrity Network, including presumably the notorious Cleta Mitchell who can spot fraud in her oatmeal -- this bunch of MAGA activists tossed around potential tactics that might need to be employed to win the election. One particular idea won approval, that they individually or as a group "try to get the courts or state election board to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters whose registrations are missing a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number." That argument depended on the Federal HAVA Act (Help America Vote) which now requires both driver's license and SS#. Older state registration forms did not.

It's important to underline the most significant revelation in ProPublica's disclosure of the July call: 

The idea of using clerical messiness as an excuse to disenfranchise voters, according to what ProPublica heard on their tape, "was resisted by two activists on the call," "including the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network" [Jim Womack?]. The data was missing not because voters had done something wrong but largely as a result of an administrative error by the state. The leader [Womack?] said the idea was “voter suppression” and “100%” certain to fail in the courts" (ProPublica). If that was Jim Womack raising the objection, then Jim Womack is a straight shooter.

August 2024 --  The Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party put into action the plan from July. They sued the State Board of Elections (SBOE), seeking to disenfrachise some 225,000 registered voters, relying on the legal theory of the Cleta Mitchell election-deniars. The suit went to Federal Judge Richard E. Myers II, a Trump appointee.

October 14th -- Moving quickly, Judge Myers hears the NCGOP petition to disenfranchise over 200K voters.

October 17th -- Judge Myers rules: dismisses a big part of the GOP petition -- disenfranchising those 200K -- but sends a subsidiary constitutional issue back to state Superior Court (where I guess it still percolates, if slowly)

That background from last October helps explain where Jefferson Griffin has been coming from in his far-out refusal to admit defeat, Because the whole Griffin argument for throwing out 60,000 actual votes -- not just voter registrations -- is the same "missing info" argument that Judge Myers heard back in October. (Though ... WARNING! Myers dismissed the GOP suit from August on the technicality of "standing," so he didn't have to deal with some of the harder legal stuff. Griffin would appear to have standing in this present case, no?)

Here's my timeline for more recent developments:

December 11th -- The NC State Board of Elections denies Griffin's request to simply throw out the votes of 60,000 people.

December 18th -- Griffin files what's known as a "writ of prohibition," asking the state's high court to block certification of the election, and to invalidate some 60,000 challenged ballots because of missing driver's license numbers or the last four digits of SS #s, etc. Griffin's petition included the plea, in ALL CAPS: "Immediate action requested BEFORE Monday, 23 December."

December 19th -- State Board of Elections gets the Griffin case removed to Federal court. Judge Richard E. Myers II of Wilmington assigned to hear it.

December 20th -- Judge Myers bats down the Griffin team's next move, which is to petition for a temporary restraining order to be slapped on the SBOE to block it from certifying the election. Judge Myers says no dice.

December 27th -- Judge Myers receives petition from Griffin's side to move this case back to the NC Supreme Court, and he significantly orders the SBOE to explain why he should keep a case involving a dispute over the recent state Supreme Court election. The judge ordered the elections board to "show cause" by Jan. 1 why the case should not return to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

January 1, 2025 -- The "immediate judicial action" requested of the Paul Newby Supreme Court on Dec. 18th (above) has, of course, not happened, because Federal Judge Myers still has control of the case, although he showed some willingness (Dec. 27th) to let it go back to a more partisanly compliant Supreme Court,

The Head Bastard in the NC House Admits It

 

Speaker of the Republican-controlled NC House Tim Moore brazenly admitted to Steve Bannon that S 382, which the Republican House passed over Gov. Cooper's veto this week, is really all about taking control of the administration of elections to more generously guarantee that Republicans will never lose statewide races again. They don't mind admitting their schemes inside their own bubbles:

“This action item today is going to be critical to making sure North Carolina continues to be able to do what it can to deliver victories for Republicans up and down the ticket and move this country in the right direction,” Moore told Bannon on Wednesday on the latter's podcast.

No hell is hot enough for these enemies of the people.

S 382 has always and only been about putting the State Board of Elections under Republican control, and we all know what that will mean for fair elections, ballot access, and voter suppression -- mainly because we lived through what Boone lawyer Stacy Clyde Eggers IV ("Four") tried to do to student voters after Republican Pat McCrory won the governorship in 2012.

 

The Horse's Ass in Charge of the Bastards in Raleigh

 

Berger told reporters that he doesn’t think swapping political control of the elections board from Democrats to Republicans is about politics.

--Will Doran, WRAL 

Yeah, politics is disavowed. While naked power is in. And if you didn't give the horse laugh to the statement above by the chief horse's ass, then you've not been paying attention.

After the Republican-dominated General Assembly passed its newest power grab (details of which are here), Berger felt it necessary to cover his raw greed for autocracy with some wholly fictional rationalization, as reported by Will Doran:

Berger told reporters Wednesday he was concerned about the vote-counting process in North Carolina being rigged for Democrats .... Berger indicated Wednesday that he was concerned with how Riggs won. Griffin was leading on election night by about 10,000 votes when roughly 98% of the state's ballots had been counted .... Berger suggested not all the votes should’ve been counted, alleging the process was somehow rigged in favor of Democrats. He didn’t explain how .... "We're seeing played out, at this point, another episode of ‘count until somebody you want to win wins,’ ” Berger told reporters at the state legislature Wednesday.

The allegations of fraud certainly caught the attention of Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the State Board of Elections. (Berger's cynical lying ought to infuriate all 500 members of the 100 county boards of election, including the 200 Republicans who sit on them, who participated in all meetings where votes were counted and who signed off on the process and on the final numbers.) Brinson Bell wasn't having it. She wrote an outraged letter to Berger, calling him out for his potentially dangerous stirring of the (cracked) pot, offered to give him a refresher course in how NC elections actually take place, and she made the letter public. According to Doran:

“When you tell your fellow citizens that an election is being conducted fraudulently, they listen,” Brinson Bell wrote to Berger. "I fear for the people running elections in this state, including in your own community, that some misguided people will conclude from your statements that actions must be taken, perhaps through the use of threats or violence.” ...

...she reminded Berger that many people believe what he says and asked him to take back those remarks. “This is an accusation of wrongdoing that has absolutely no basis in fact,” Brinson Bell wrote. “You are a top leader of our state government. What you say matters.”

She used the 2020 elections as a cautionary tale, alluding to disproven accusations of rigged elections that fueled an exodus of seasoned elections workers.

Brinson Bell also told Berger she’d be happy to explain to him how elections work, if he’s feeling confused.

But of course the horse's ass leaders of the GOP in the Age of Trump do not take back anything, nor apologize, nor lose a scintilla of a half-step in their march toward total control over who gets to vote. 

The Bastards in Raleigh

 

The elections which Republicans did not win in North Carolina -- governor, lieutenant gov, attorney gen'l, superintendent of public instruction -- have hardly been settled, including the one that broke the Republican veto-override super majority in the NC House, when Phil Berger & Co. realized they only had a month to pass a new law limiting what newly elected Democrats can do in office. They cleverly called the bill "Hurricane Relief," but those provisions aimed at recovering Western NC amount to less than 20 pages, while the bulk of the 130-page bill is blatant and unashamed power-grabs.

The most egregious of the power grabs applies to the governor's power to appoint the State Board of Elections, the agency which the GOP has been trying to take full control of for years. The new law, which passed the House last night and now goes to the Senate today -- fast-tracked, you betcha! -- takes the appointment power away from Governor Josh Stein and gives it to the newly elected Republican Auditor Dave Boliek, who's all too eager to carry partisan water for the bosses.

The new law also makes a project of dismantling the independence of our new Attorney General Jeff Jackson:

Republican lawmakers want to prevent the attorney general, an office that the GOP hasn’t won in an election for more than a century, from taking positions on state laws being challenged in court that are different from the position maintained by GOP legislative leaders. 

The bill also specifies that the attorney general can’t take positions in court that would lead to a state law being struck down. 

This proposal comes as outgoing Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who voters chose to serve as the state’s next governor in this month’s election, has recused himself or refused to defend the state against a number of high-profile political lawsuits involving abortion, elections, gerrymandering and other issues. 

Stein, who has served two terms as attorney general, has defended his decisions to refuse to defend laws passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that he believes are unconstitutional. 

GOP leaders have criticized Stein in those instances, and accused him of refusing “to do his job.” They have frequently intervened in lawsuits challenging the laws they’ve passed, and defended them in court. 

Liz Barber, the director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of North Carolina, said in an interview Tuesday morning that the changes were an “unconstitutional, undemocratic power grab.” [NewsObserver]

In what crazy universe is it all right for the Republicans to be doing this? Reducing the dimensions of a public office only after they fail to win an election to that office?

Let the lawsuits fly.

GOP Attempts Again To Grab All the Access to Voting

 

Hilarious. No matter how much power you've got, you can always choke down some more. Kyle Ingram, reporting Tuesday morning, November 19

RALEIGH Draft legislation from North Carolina lawmakers proposes stripping incoming Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of all appointments to the State Board of Elections and giving them to a newly elected Republican official.

If I were cynical enough to make this up, I would have.

Sad News, For All Who Love Their Conspiracies

 

Kyle Ingram, in the News&Observer:

RALEIGH After the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced Thursday that it had removed nearly 750,000 registrations from the voter rolls, misinformation spread on social media regarding the scope and circumstances of this decision. 

“They’re trying to steal this election,” one X user wrote. 

“I’m sure it’s one big, giant, coincidence that NC is doing this a month before Election Day,” another wrote. 

Others fretted that the removal was a ploy by the Republican Party to influence the outcome of the election in a battleground state. The truth, however, is that this was a routine process carried out over the course of nearly two years by a state agency with bipartisan oversight. 

“Eligible voters do not need to worry that they were removed from the system,” Pat Gannon, a spokesperson for the board, said. “However, election officials always encourage voters to check their registration through the state board’s voter search tool.”

RFK Jr., Hot and Cold

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been keeping a lot of lawyers employed in North Carolina.

In July, the NC State Board of Elections (SBOE) voted to place the We the People Party, RFK Jr.'s political vehicle, on the North Carolina ballot. The state Democratic Party promptly sued to kick We the People off the ballot, and RFK Jr.'s lawyers successfully turned aside that challenge in Wake Superior Court on August 12th. Safely on the NC ballot, and destined to remain there as it turns out, despite RFK Jr.'s changeable mind (though this tale isn't quite told yet in its entirety).

On August 23rd, Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump (who's apparently promised to put anti-vaxxer Kennedy in charge of medical policies for the nation), but the We the People Party didn't think to formally request Kennedy's removal from the North Carolina ballot until earlier this week. When the SBOE met on Thursday -- 3 days ago -- to consider the removal request, some 1.73 million ballots had already been printed in 60 counties of the state, because under state statute absentee ballots must begin going out in the mail by September 6th, next Friday. The SBOE voted 3-2 along party lines to keep Kennedy on the ballot. The Republican Board members, carrying water for Trump, argued that the statute requiring mailed ballots by September 6th could be delayed. And damn the cost of reprinting 1.73 million new ballots!

Yesterday, RFK Jr.'s lawyers were back in Wake Superior Court suing the SBOE to do what the two Republican board members had wanted -- ignore the statute, reprint the ballots, forget Kennedy's name was ever there, like a disquieting dream that never happened.

Don't know how the Wake Superior Court judge can possibly rule in his favor.