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.

Dallas Woodhouse Causes Embarrassment, But what Dallas Woodhouse Stood For Still Very Much the Philosophy at the State Board of Elections

Big news this afternoon: Dallas Woodhouse, who has a history of trying to knee-cap college students' voting and Sunday voting for African-Americans, has been "reassigned" in the State Board of Elections. Instead of his $110,000 per annum job of "advising" local county boards of elections -- principally, advising the Republican majorities to eliminate campus polling places where possible and stop Sunday voting in communities with large Black congregations, Woodhouse has been reassigned to a desk in another part of the SBOE.

But it's all window-dressing, and it means nothing. The attitude toward suppressing certain voters still reigns in Auditor's Dave Boliek's MAGA brain. Woodhouse had caused Mr. Boliek some very bad optics after he was revealed telling the chair of the Jackson County Board of Elections, "Don't let them have a vote," them being students at Western Carolina University who had become accumstomed to a student union early voting site. There's also evidence that he told the Pasquotank County Bd of Elections chair to eliminate Sunday voting.  Pasquotank County is 35% Black.

The leopards can white-wash their spots, but they're still going to be blood predators.

 

A Case of Nerves?

 

Dave Boliek

 

 

A week and a day ago, June 16th, Republicans in the NC House introduced H 958, "Election Law Changes," 37 pages of monkeying around with the way things have been. Under this bill, any resident of a county may challenge any other resident's ballot until five days after an election (oh, yes, there'll be mischief on this one!), and State Auditor Dave Boliek will get yet a new sweeping power -- "mandatory post-election audits" in counties of Dave Boliek's choosing (maybe particularly the ones that turn blue?). Dave Boliek used to be a registered Democrat. He became a Republican, won his election, and has proven himself extra loyal to the GOP. (Witness how he bullied Republicans on the Jackson County Board of Elections to reject early voting on the Western Carolina University campus.) H 958 would also make more State Board of Elections staff into political (partisan) appointees, and curiously the law would ban any members of county boards of elections from "encouraging" citizens to vote. Why? Because human flesh is frail? 

The backlash to this bill, which was being fast-tracked, turned pretty fierce fast and overwhelming -- there's still a portal available for public comment -- so the bill is stalled, stuck in the Rules Committee (where many a problematic piece of legislation has died of slow suffocation). Revisions to H 958 may be underway, but does it matter? The GOP has cemented its identity -- the burning need to keep as many people from voting as possible.

The fact that the House leadership flinched in the face of public uproar -- former Speaker Tim Moore would never have flinched -- may tell us something about the case of nerves right now in the Republican majority. Do they need a lot of negative attention right now over the right to vote?

 

W T [EVERLASTING ] F

 

The Wake County Board of Elections just voted unanimously to approve an early voting plan for November that cuts out the Talley Student Union on the North Carolina State University campus, where some 47,000 students, faculty, and staff go every day. The final vote was 5-0, with both Democratic reps voting with the Republicans. This final decision followed what appeared to be a gallant Democratic attempt to save Talley as an early voting site. The two Democrats made a motion to keep Talley in the early voting plan, which pleased the overflow crowd who attended yesterday to watch the action, many of them NCSU affiliated. The Democratic motion was defeated along partisan lines 3-2. Naturally.

The next step would have depended on the Democrats sticking to their high-minded guns. They should have voted against the final version -- the Dallas Woodhouse-branded solution for discouraging the youth vote by whatever means. (In Jackson County, where Republican members of the local BOE were highminded enough to recommend a campus early voting site for Western Carolina, they got threatened by higher ups. One of the Republicans resigned in protest.) Voting against the Republican majority on the board forces by law a punt to the State Board of Elections, where, yes, another negative outcome is assured. The three Republican majority on the SBOE are in on the fix. But Democrats who don't keep fighting, even in the face of insurmountable odds -- it's not a good look.

I would like this not to be the Democratic brand in North Carolina: Caving, like DeeCee Dems. Make motions and argue to keep a voting site for young people, like you truly believe in what you're saying, like a hero for the people, and then turn around and vote with the opposition so that there cannot be a test of the decision at the State Board of Elections.

I would love to hear the reasoning behind that final unanimous vote.

No, never mind. In fact, just STFU.

 

Jackson Co. Board of Elections Member Blows the Whistle on Republican Collusion To Squelch the Youth Vote

 

Dave Boliek

 

 

We've known since the bosses in the General Assembly put Republican Auditor Dave Boliek in charge of the State Board of Elections that the GOP had drawn a cross-hatch on the youth vote. That became crystal clear when Boliek appointed Republican operative Dallas Woodhouse to "coordinate" voting plans with county parties. What Woodhouse apparently did was issue "kill" orders for university early voting sites in several county BOEs, one of which was Jackson County, home to Western Carolina University. WCU had enjoyed an early voting site on its campus since 2016. 

We don't know how Woodhouse may have delivered the message about squelching the youth vote, but the Republican majority in Jackson Co. got the message for the primary. The board voted 3-2 along partisan lines to deny WCU its usual site, and because the vote was not unanimous -- as required by state law -- the primary early voting plan had to go to the State Board of Elections with its 3-2 Republican majority. The Republicans on the SBOE naturally found it quite easy to sanction the closing of the site at WCU.

That was the primary. Now early voting plans for the General Elections are once again issues for county BOEs. Two of the three Republican members in Jackson let it be known that they supported returning early voting to the WCU campus for this fall. Those two members were promptly summoned to a secret dressing-down by the Jackson County Republican Executive Committee, which according to the member who blew the whistle, threatened the two men with expulsion from the board:

“When we made it clear what we were going to vote, we were asked to come before the Executive Committee of the Republican Party” to justify it, the whistleblower told an open meeting of the Jackson BOE Monday. “And we presented them evidence, we presented them numbers, we presented them everything,” the whistle-blower said. “And all I heard was, ‘Well, we just don’t want it on campus. We just don’t want it on campus.’ ”

One of those two renegade Republican members promptly resigned from the board in April, leaving a 2-2 split of voting members. Only one remaining Republican, the Chair of the Board, voted against the WCU site for the Fall elections. The whistle-blower and the two Democrats voted for the WCU site. The board chair was apologetic and somewhat chagrined. According to reporting by NCNewsline, he admitted during Monday's meeting that he had been pressured "from above" and that he was sorry to be the one vote that kept the plan from being unanimous. The final decision will now fall again to the SBOE, and we've seen this movie before. 

What they're doing to suppress the youth vote in the upcoming election is as plain as the large partisan nose on Dave Boliek's fat face.

NCGOP -- Whittling Away While They Can

 

The inevitable news this morning (we've been waiting for this move), and there's probably more voter suppression to come. It's their brand.

 

RALEIGH, N.C. May 27, 2026 -- Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing proposals that would shorten the state’s early, in-person voting period and eliminate a Sunday voting day statewide. 

Two bills moving through the General Assembly, Senate Bill 1084 and House Bill 66, would reduce the number of early voting days before elections.

The Senate proposal would cut early in-person voting from 17 days to 10 in all 100 counties and eliminate one Sunday of voting statewide. The House version would shorten the period from 17 days to 13, also removing a Sunday voting day.

Early voting is the most popular method of casting a ballot. Most North Carolinians vote early rather than on Election Day.... [WRAL]

Students Sue for Restoration of Campus Polling Sites

 

Democracy Docket:

A group of North Carolina students sued Republican state officials Tuesday to restore early voting sites on three college campuses across the state, including at the United States’ largest historically Black college.

The lawsuit comes just over two weeks after the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) rejected the early voting sites in a 3-2 vote along party lines....

In the lawsuit [brought by the Elias Law Group] the students allege that the board’s removal of voting sites at Western Carolina University (WCU), the University of North Carolina–Greensboro (UNC-G), and North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T), the largest HBCU in the country, violated the U.S. Constitution in multiple ways.

They argue that the removal unduly burdens the right to vote in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments by forcing students, who often do not have reliable transportation, to travel long distances off campus in order to cast their ballot....

The elimination of on-campus sites violates the 26th Amendment by targeting student voters, particularly young Black voters, the lawsuit argues.

Taken together, the three campuses serve over 40,000 students, including thousands of Black students. NC A&T has a current enrollment of over 15,000 students.

“For many of these students, voting in college is their first opportunity to exercise the franchise — a milestone in their civic engagement and a connection to the generations of Black North Carolinians who fought for the right to vote,” the lawsuit reads.

The students, who also sued the Jackson County Board of Elections and many of its members, are seeking a court order to block the elimination of the on-campus early voting sites for the upcoming 2026 primary.

Since Republicans took control of the NCSBE in May, it has taken several steps to restrict voting in the state.

Sue Their Sorry Asses!

 

The new Republican majority on the Jackson Co. Board of Elections voted 3-2 to eliminate an early-voting site on the campus of Western Carolina University that has been used for a decade. According to Chris Cooper, a political scientist at WCU, the university’s voting site has served "an outsize proportion of young and diverse voters compared to the rest of the county’s polling places."

Meanwhile, the new Republican majority on the Guilford Co. Board of Elections also voted 3-2 to reject a proposal to include early voting sites at UNC Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University, which had been the case in 2024.

It's very clear why this is going on. The youth vote is a problem for Republicans, and they intend to make it as difficult as possible for that age group. The final decision on Jackson and Guilford will be made by the State Board of Elections, and we're pretty sure how that will go with its particular Republican majority. The only remedy will be for the injured parties in Jackson and Guilford to sue.

Watauga County faced the same thing in 2013, when the election of Pat McCrory changed the local Board of Elections to Republican control (under the guiding arm of Stacy "Four" Eggers), which promptly eliminated the polling site at the AppState Student Union. The local Watauga Voting Rights Taskforce sued in Wake Superior Court, and the judge concluded that the decision was arbitrary and capricious. He ordered a polling place on the AppState campus. Far as I know that order is still good, which perhaps explains why the current Watauga BOE hasn't attempted to eliminate campus voting this year.

If anyone's interested, we know a good Raleigh law firm that might help you guys.

Michael Behrent's Burnt Sugar

I recently read on an Art Pope-sponsored website a long essay by AppState history professor Michael Behrent, who also until recently served as the Democratic Chair of the Watauga County Board of Elections. (He says he's no longer a registered Democrat.) Behrent begins his essay hypothesizing about something that only a bonehead first-year teacher would try, "overt campaigning in the classroom." While I certainly agree that overt political campaigning in the classroom is wrong, Behrent makes a dark and sinister suggestion that "some political organizations have found workarounds to avoid these prohibitions, allowing them to promote their interests in taxpayer-funded educational contexts."

That's the heart of Behrent's argument -- nefarious "workarounds" are subverting the will of the General Assembly.

"Workarounds"

That word needs unpacking. Behrent seems to be implying that "overt campaigning" is in fact happening regularly, especially on the campus of AppState. His main piece of evidence ... well, I'll let him tell it:

On Wednesday, August 27, I received an email that seemed to have been blind copied to other Appalachian State faculty, as well. It was sent from an App State email address to my App State email address. The sender identified himself as a student “volunteer” for the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force, which he described as “a local nonpartisan organization fighting for every person’s ability and right to vote” (italics in original). The student noted, “We do not engage with candidates or political issues.” He requested permission to visit my class—and those of other faculty to whom the email was sent—to discuss how to register to vote. The email said: “We understand your time is limited, so we only ask for five minutes at the beginning or end of your class. If you would like to invite one of our representatives for a brief presentation, please respond with the location, and preferred date and time for our visit.”

Behrent makes a big deal out of that email and its student author, but I don't see any "overt campaigning" in it. The Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force (WCVRTF) has always presented voter registrations as a strictly non-partisan, informational activity to ensure proper registrations that will count on E-Day. The Task Force registers everyone, of whatever party. The greater bulk of their registrations are "Unaffiliated," with a few Democrats, a few Republicans, and some Libertarians. What's wrong with that? And what's wrong with that student's emailed and open request, to legally and ethically and according to IRS rules do non-partisan voter registration in a classroom? Show me the "overt campaigning." To equate voter registration efforts with partisan campaigning is ridiculous on its face.

Behrent takes a leap of several furlongs, alleging that the "workarounds" are discoverable in that poor student's associations with other people. It's quite the Easter egg of guilt -- that the several people who started the WCVRTF are -- or were -- also active in the Democratic Party. And Behrent is right about that, but so what? The Voting Rights Task Force was originally a committee in the Party, focused on voter registration. The committee eventually spun itself off from the Party as a separate non-profit, barred by IRS rules from "overt campaigning." The Task Force promotes ballot-access for every voter and defends the provisional ballot, and has gone to bat for the rights of legally registered voters who go to the wrong precinct on election day. The Task Force won a lawsuit restoring the polling place in the AppState Student Union. More recently it went to court again and won a case to give due process to voters whose legitimate voter registration forms had clerical errors which disenfranchised them. The Task Force is also a co-plaintiff with NC Common Cause, seeking to overturn the Ralph Hise gerrymander of Watauga's CoCommish and school board districts.

Bottomline: A person can be legally, ethically, morally involved in more than one org at a time (or else the world is going to be short a lot of the volunteers who actually make things happen). Nowhere does Behrent offer a single instance of a classroom breach, when "overt campaigning" occurred, or of any actual breaking of the rules. Not one. It's all innuendo and those suspicious associations. Democrats doing democratic things while wearing different hats and following different rules. Behrent build a straw horse, imagining a bunch of political activists who (he says) give away their game on the WCVRTF website by quoting liberal icon Lyndon Johnson on the supreme importance of the vote, while editing the original quote to eliminate the word man. (The Pope universe loves this kind of "outing" of liberal stupidities, and Behrent makes hay out of it.)

Behrent's guilt-by-association tour eventually gets to my own household, to PamsPicks.net, and the whole progressive nest of plugged-in citizens who sometimes do voter registration for the WCVRTF and then sometimes do activities for the Democratic Party and who know how to keep things separate. For the record, PamsPicks.net is not published as an arm of the Task Force nor of the Democratic Party. It's an independent source of information and candidate endorsements that often infuriates Democrats as much as Republicans. Behrent gets this right: 

“Pam’s Picks” is the brainchild of a Watauga County activist, who for years has regularly provided extensive information about local, state, and national candidates in addition to making endorsements in most races. “Pam’s Picks” typically includes a marked-up sample ballot with her endorsements noted, which voters may take with them to the polls. A January 2023 article from The Appalachian, the App State student newspaper, quotes the author of “Pam’s Picks”: “I am a progressive Watauga resident and have long held interest in local politics and issues.” The same article notes that, in the 2020 Democratic primary, a candidate who received less than 10 percent statewide called the author of “Pam’s Picks,” puzzled that he had won Watauga. “Pam” explained: “Well, I got your story out.”

So what's Behrent's beef? That an independent woman -- not ever a Democratic Party officer but a self-starting volunteer who has quite separately built a following for her "Picks," because she does thorough research on every candidate of whatever party, offering background facts and social media links, and endorses according to her admittedly "progressive" political values. What's his problem with that?

His essay smells like burnt sugar.

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.

What Would Be the Remedy for Sen. Hise's Unconstitutional Gerrymander of Watauga?

 

If you're wondering what sort of earthquake it'll be if the Watauga Voting Rights Taskforce wins the lawsuit outlined in the last post below (an admittedly huge if, given the effects of Trump's brow-beating of the Federal judiciary), here is the bottomline (and the last two pages of the suit):

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court:

1. Award preliminary and permanent injunctive relief enjoining Defendants and their agents, officers, and employees from enforcing, implementing, or giving any effect to the reapportionment plans described in Senate Bill 759, Sec. 1 and Senate Bill 912, Sec. 1 in their entirety;

2. Award preliminary and permanent injunctive relief enjoining Defendants and their agents, officers, and employees from enforcing, implementing, or giving any effect to the referendum ban described in Senate Bill 912, Sec. 2 in its entirety;

3. Declare that the reapportionment plans described in Senate Bill 759, Sec. 1 and Senate Bill 912, Sec. 1 are unconstitutional because each violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments;

4. Declare that Senate Bill 912, Sec. 2 is unconstitutional because it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments;

5. Restore, for purposes of holding elections for the Watauga County Commission , the reapportionment plans approved by Watauga County voters in 2024;

6. Make all further orders as are just, necessary, and proper to preserve Citizen Plaintiffs’ rights to participate equally in elections for the Watauga County Commission and School Board and to be equally represented by members of the County Commission and School Board;

7. Award Plaintiffs their costs, disbursement, and reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred in bringing this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988;

8. Tax the costs of this action against Defendants; and

9. Grant such other or further relief the Court deems appropriate.

Watauga County Voting Rights Taskforce (et al.) Challenges Sen. Hise's Unconstitutional Gerrymander of Watauga

 

Brandon Kingdollar, reporting for NC Newsline:

Sen. Ralph Hise

A federal lawsuit brought by voters Wednesday [Oct. 1, 2025] accuses the North Carolina legislature of forcing unconstitutional voting maps on Watauga County to help more Republican candidates win local elections.

The challenge, filed in the Western District of North Carolina by seven Watauga County voters and joined by voting rights advocacy groups, argues that Senate Bill 759, passed in 2023, imposes “unconstitutional, malapportioned electoral districts with large population deviations,” violating the legal principle of one person, one vote.

“The Plan dilutes the votes of Democratic voters by systematically overpopulating the districts in which Democrats have the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice and systematically underpopulating the districts in which Republicans have the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice,” the complaint states.

Watauga Board of Elections Director Matthew Snyder declined to comment on pending litigation. A spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit names the Watauga County Board of Elections and its members as defendants. Advocacy organizations Common Cause North Carolina and the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force are also plaintiffs in the suit.

Under the previous election system, county commissioners were elected to five residential districts — meaning candidates must live in the district they represent, but the county’s residents vote in all five elections — yielding three Democratic commissioners and two Republicans.

After the new map, made up of electoral districts — where only residents of the district vote on that district’s commissioner — the board is made up of five Republicans. Two districts encompassing most of Boone will not elect commissioners until 2026 under S.B. 759, leaving the majority of the town’s residents with no representation, according to the lawsuit.

Following the election, the three Republicans elected to the commission appointed two Republicans to the remaining vacancies, seats held by Republicans that were vacated to run in the new election.

While the initial law applied the districts only to the Watauga Board of Commissioners, a subsequent bill passed in 2024, Senate Bill 912, extended them to the Watauga Board of Education. The lawsuit also challenges that piece of legislation.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in a 2019 ruling on North Carolina maps that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” The North Carolina Supreme Court also views such claims as “nonjusticiable under the North Carolina Constitution,” upholding Republican-leaning maps in 2023.

The Watauga complaint centers its legal claims on nonpartisan classes of voters instead, including location and perceived duration of residence. The complaint alleges that Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell) sought to dilute the votes of urban students to boost the voting power of rural residents of the county. 

Hise, a Republican whose district includes Watauga, was the lone sponsor of both bills. He said on the state Senate floor in 2023 that he was motivated to counteract “the predominance of [Appalachian State University] and others in the electoral process.” The complaint quotes him pointing to “a longtime standing conflict between the influence of the university and others within the county.”

These remarks, the plaintiffs argue, are an admission of two unconstitutional criteria for the maps: geographic favoritism and discrimination against perceived temporary residents.

Hise did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[The Fate of Last Year's Local Referendum]

When the Watauga Board of Commissioners voted to hold a local referendum proposing new maps without those discrepancies, the General Assembly added to S.B. 912 a provision barring any referendum enacted by Watauga County voters impacting the county commission from taking effect until after the 2032 elections.

Despite the referendum’s passage by a 71% to 29% margin in 2024, it will not take effect for nearly a decade. This violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, the complaint alleges.

“The voters of Watauga County will be stuck with unconstitutional districts for their County Commission and Board of Education, unless this Court intervenes,” the lawsuit states. “Fundamentally, the people of Watauga County have no choice but to petition this Court for urgently needed relief from Defendants’ ongoing violations of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”

The individual plaintiffs include six Democratic voters and one unaffiliated voter. Three are former members of the Watauga County Board of Commissioners, including Larry Turnbow and Charlie Wallin, who served as chair and vice-chair prior to the 2024 election.

“Watauga County residents voted to adopt fair districts while rejecting the gerrymandered maps imposed on us by the legislature,” said Ray Russell, the other former commissioner joining the lawsuit. “We’re filing this lawsuit to protect our mountain community against the unconstitutional overreach by politicians in Raleigh.”

How Trump Will Attempt to Steal the 2026 Mid-Terms

 

Marc Elias and the Elias Law Group won a voting rights case in North Carolina in 2024, brought by the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force et al. (And see this.) Elias always has the hard facts, and he's a good explainer.

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.

We Won One for Voter Rights in North Carolina

 

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!

A Wrinkle in the Theft of a Supreme Court Seat

The "wrinkle" in the title ought to be a definitive foil to the corruption of the North Carolina judiciary, but I'm cynical enough by now to remember what they do with wrinkles -- they iron them out. Just disappear them with heat.

Courtroom maneuvers have never been my specialty, and I have to strain sometimes to understand legal theories, so I'm hanging very frankly on the reporting of Bryan Anderson (whose Anderson Alerts is required reading) to understand what's going forward in Republican Jefferson Griffin's quest to steal Allison Riggs's seat on the NC Supremes. 

To overturn Riggs's 734-vote victory, Griffin wanted way over 60,000 votes thrown out, including an obscure little group of 260 North Carolinians whom Griffin labeled “never residents.” And you know what? The two Republicans on the North Carolina Court of Appeals -- apparently without the most basic attempt to verify Griffin's data (?) -- simply accepted Griffin's claim and ordered the State Board of Elections to remove all 260 voters from the count. The state Supreme Court upheld that decision.

You wanna know the best part? Those 260 have no recourse, no mechanism for appeal, and actually no notice probably that their whole voter registration no longer exists.

So Bryan Anderson went snooping -- "review of public records, news clips, social media posts, and interviews" -- and soon found 16 voters -- out of no-telling-how-many there really are -- who have resided in North Carolina, or still live in North Carolina, "some having spent their entire childhood in North Carolina, continuing to pay property taxes or working in the state." But the two gullible judges swallowed Griffin's zero evidence and stupidly eliminated the basic rights of 260 voters who happened to be overseas when they requested their absentee ballots.

Notice the last one is from Watauga.

16 Alleged “Never Resident” Voters Who Stand To Have Their Ballots Wrongfully Discarded

Vidyaranya Gargeya (Guilford County): A retired professor who taught at UNC-Greensboro for 30 years who, according to the school, has visited every college in the state. He’s paid property taxes at the same suburban Guilford County home he’s owned since 2003, according to public records. And voting records show he voted in-person on Election Day eight times without issue, and has voted in every midterm and presidential general election since 2006. He appears to have cast an overseas mail-in ballot for the 2024 election. And his next door neighbor confirmed on Saturday that Gargeya does indeed live next to him.

Josiah Young (Jackson County): Young was raised in Webster, played basketball for Jackson County Early College and runs a drone photography business based in western North Carolina. Currently living in Spain.

Michelle Carrillo-Corujo (Guilford County): Corujo grew up in North Carolina. She attended Crestdale Middle School in Matthews in 2015 and has largely remained in North Carolina ever since. She graduated from UNC-Greensboro last year with a degree in political science and recently moved to the Netherlands for further academic pursuits.

Holly Arrowood (Henderson County): Arrowood has been a North Carolina voter since 2008 and has cast a ballot in-person on Election Day seven times. She also appears to still live in Chapel Hill.

Jean-Louis Mondon (Henderson County): Mondon has been a U.S. citizen since 1986, has long lived in North Carolina and has voted in the state since at least 1994. He taught English, French and Spanish at Blue Ridge Community College from 2005 to 2009, runs a Christian blog and is a private tutor and linguist.

David Eberhard (Orange County): Eberhard is a longtime neurologist and taught at UNC-Chapel Hill from 2011 to 2016.

 
Austyn Blamy (Union County): Blamy graduated from high school at Cuthbertson High School in Waxhaw and has been a seasonal swim coach there since 2018, according to her LinkedIn page. Blamy was also a D1 athlete from 2023-2024 for Liberty University’s swim team.

Ayse Babahan (Wake County): Babahan was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Istanbul. She graduated from the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York and is now an actress living overseas.

Vicki Brent (Wake County): Brent attended Millbrook High School in Raleigh from 2017 to 2021 and served on the Wake County Black Student Coalition.

 
Eric Hoffman (Wake County): Hoffman attended UNC-Chapel Hill from 2014 to 2016 and got a master’s degree in business administration and has been a registered North Carolina voter since 2011. He’s since worked out of Holly Springs and Australia.

Sergio Cutiva Valencia (Watauga County): Valencia is an Appalachian State University alum who graduated in 2022.

Jethro Thinks He Can Control Who Votes. He Can't

 

You wake up every blessed morning in Trump 2.0, check your pulse for a beat, and dial up the news. The news -- despite which nipple you suck from -- always proves pulse-quickening, like you've inadvertently ingested some hallucinatory mushroom. Jaw-dropping developments in government, or lack thereof, prompting out-loud profanity. Today the outrage was John F. Kennedy Junior's forcing the resignation of Dr. Peter Marks from the Food and Drug Administration. Marks is credited as the real architect behind the rapid development of the coronavirus vaccines (plural), and his resignation letter is a classic (also a doozy in the annals of fuck-you resignation letters).

What was the outrage yesterday? You're forgiven if you can't remember. The outrages come at us relentlessly, daily. I'm just coming to understand the Trump outrage of last Tuesday (March 25), when he signed ExecOrder "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections." Among several other provisions in the order, Trump demanded that henceforth voter registration requires proof of citizenship. Under Sec.2(a)(ii), “documentary proof of United States citizenship” shall include a copy of: 

(A) a United States passport;

(B) an identification document compliant with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-13, Div. B) that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States;

(C) an official military identification card that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States; or

(D) a valid Federal or State government-issued photo identification if such identification indicates that the applicant is a United States citizen or if such identification is otherwise accompanied by proof of United States citizenship.

Do you see any mention of a birth certificate -- proof of birth, say, in a document filed by the Florence Nightingale Hospital, Dallas, Texas, or anywhere else earthly? No birth certificate allowed? He lists passports first, as though any Tom, Dick, or Harry has a passport for foreign travel and exotic adventures, and how many rural and working-class Americans lack any of those listed documents?

According to analysis by Dr. Andy Jackson, Director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, the proof of citizenship order applies only when people use the national mail voter registration form (a mail-in postcard). How many voters register via that postcard in North Carolina? Dunno. But according to Jackson, any voter may still register to vote via their own state Board of Elections forms, which aren't as preposterous as the Trump order. Jackson makes a revealing comment when pointing out that Trump's order can't affect people who register using the SBOE form: "If Trump had attempted that in his order, he would have been well outside his authority."

Well Outside His Authority

Trump's whole "Preserve and Protect" order is a joke of unconstitutional hilarities.

The U.S. Constitution is clear: Article 1, Section 4 dictates that only states and Congress can make or alter the “time, place, and manner” of holding federal elections. The president is bestowed with no such power. He isn't even mentioned in the chain of command. On its face, his order is shit fantasy. But it'll take courts to say so.

In the meantime, I'm indebted to Andy Jackson for his approximation of just how much of North Carolina's voting practice might end up impacted by Trump's attempt to control access:

What is the bottom line for North Carolina?

To comply with Trump’s executive order, North Carolina may have to:

• Require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote with a national mail voter registration form or a Federal Post Card Application.
• Stop using ballot marking devices, except as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• Comply with voter registration list maintenance practices in the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act (there is debate over how well North Carolina does that).
• Only accept ballots received by election day.

There will be numerous lawsuits over some provisions of this order, so its final impact is unclear.

Jefferson Griffin Blinks in the Most Pathetic Way Imaginable

Judge Jefferson "Crazy Eyes" Griffin

Trying to keep up with all the moving parts of Jefferson Griffin's scheme to steal the Supreme Court election from Allison Riggs.

Recall the posting here on January 8th: "Conservative Majority on NC Supreme Court Fractures Over Griffin Attempt To Steal the Election." The Republican who disagreed most vociferously with Griffin's proposal to throw out over 60,000 legitimate votes, Associate Justice Richard Dietz, wrote

“Permitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules—and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules—invites incredible mischief."

Anderson Reports has out this morning news of an updated court filing from Griffin in which he blinks in the most pathetic way imaginable:

Seeming to recognize Dietz’s criticism, Griffin on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to consider a phased ruling, where it would first direct the 5,509 ballots from overseas voters without photo ID be tossed out first. If a retabulation showed Griffin overtaking Riggs’ 734-vote lead, Griffin would want the election to be certified in his favor. If a retabulation showed Riggs still ahead, however, Griffin would want the Supreme Court to proceed to the issue of 267 overseas voters who don’t reside in North Carolina and the 60,273 voters with incomplete registration, if necessary.

In other hilarious words, just toss out ballots until I say quit, and maybe it won't take disenfranchising the full 60,000 to give me Seat 6.

If I were a standup comic, I'd be exploiting this lame slug of a politician for big laughs.