NC Republicans may be second-guessing at least some of their bad elections bill | Opinion

Protesters showed up at the legislative building in Raleigh on Tuesday, ready to denounce a bill that would change the makeup of state and local boards of elections.

Only the bill never received a vote.

The measure was pulled from committee at the last minute, and a top House Republican said the vote would be delayed until at least next week. No explanation was given, but House Speaker Tim Moore later told reporters that the bill needed a few tweaks before it would be ready for a vote, according to WRAL.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Raleigh told the Editorial Board that they did not know why the bill was removed from the calendar. Rep. Marcia Morey, a Durham Democrat, said on social media that she drove 14 hours to get back from vacation in time for the vote, only for it to be postponed.

If Republicans truly are reconsidering Senate Bill 749, that’s good news. We’ve said before that the bill — deceptively titled “No Partisan Advantage in Elections” — is a formula for disaster. It would end the longstanding practice of state and county boards of elections being weighted in favor of the governor’s party. Instead, appointments to these boards would be evenly split between the two major political parties.

In such a scenario, gridlock is inevitable. In some cases, those impasses could be resolved by the legislature itself. In others, there is no clear remedy aside from legal action, increasing the likelihood that questions of election management could be tied up in the courts. (It’s probably not a coincidence that the legislative and judicial branches are comfortably under the control of Republicans.)

That the bill would be met with significant public resistance should come as no surprise. This is not the first time that North Carolina Republicans have attempted to strip the governor’s power to make appointments to the State Board of Elections, and it has been declared unconstitutional. In 2016, before Gov. Roy Cooper took office, legislators passed a similar bill that increased the number of members of the State Board of Elections to eight, four from each party. The North Carolina Supreme Court later ruled that it was a violation of separation of powers. Now that Republicans make up a majority of the state Supreme Court, lawmakers may be more confident that the law would be allowed to stand.

While lawmakers are busy concocting new ways to steamroll the electoral process, election officials are left to navigate the chaos and confusion already caused by North Carolina’s voter ID law, which will be in effect for the first time in municipal elections this year. It’s not yet clear if the funding requested by the State Board of Elections to carry out the photo ID requirement will be allocated in full in this year’s budget. It’s also not clear if the budget will contain the funding necessary to address staffing shortages at DMV offices, which are so overwhelmed that appointments are not available for several months, and walk-in hours may have long lines requiring time that many people do not have.

During the past five years, as voter ID was litigated and re-litigated in court, Republicans repeatedly defended the law by pointing to the fact that 55% of voters approved it in a 2018 ballot measure. In that same election, however, voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to change the makeup of the state elections boards — a fact that lawmakers seem to have conveniently ignored. It was not a particularly close vote, as nearly 62% of voters statewide opposed it.

And yet, the bill’s sponsors have the gall to claim that this bill is somehow in the best interest of the very voters who have already rejected it. Upon introducing the bill earlier this year, Senate Republicans claimed it would repair public trust in our elections during a time of “intense political polarization.”

Without knowing exactly why Senate Bill 749 was removed from the calendar, it’s hard to say whether it will resurface in the future. It would not be the first time that a controversial bill was pulled at the last minute only to be revived later.

But if Republicans are truly interested in affirming the fairness of our elections, they should stop telling voters there’s a reason to distrust them in the first place. The best thing they can do for our elections is leave them alone.

This story was originally published September 7, 2023 at 5:00 AM.