NC House must stop democracy-dismantling bill disguised as storm relief | Opinion

As dark clouds for democracy brew in Washington D.C., danger is also looming in North Carolina, where a one-party-dominated legislature is attempting to strip power from candidates voters elected mere weeks ago. Fortunately, just as there has been push-back on some of the president-elect’s most anti-democratic moves, it’s not too late to counteract the North Carolina developments.

Legislative leaders in North Carolina’s legislature are attempting a cynical power grab. They proposed a 131-page bill, SB 382, posing as hurricane relief badly needed by residents in Western North Carolina. But a closer look reveals the legislation is packed with sweeping power grabs that dismantle democratic norms, rig the system and strip power from elected officials.

In a moment when devastated communities need disaster recovery and leadership, these folks opted for political opportunism. Dismantling democracies doesn’t happen overnight. They are taken apart piece by piece and often through legislation disguised as something else entirely.

Just like this bill.

While this bill does include some provisions to aid communities impacted by Hurricane Helene, that is plainly not the objective of the legislation. Masked within provisions to fund debris removal and child care centers, the overwhelming majority of its content is devoted to reshaping the political landscape in one party’s favor. Only 13 pages of this 131-page bill address disaster relief, and even those provisions fall short of meeting the moment.

Stripped of the few small pieces of disaster relief used to mask its primary goal, the bill is an act of partisan brute force.

One of the most egregious provisions restructures the State Board of Elections, transferring appointment authority away from the governor. The board is made up of five members with a party split of three to two, currently giving the governor the power to decide the political leaning of the group with his appointment of the chair — a system that has long been in place under Democratic and Republican governors. But the new legislation attempts to move this power away from Governor-elect Josh Stein, a Democrat, and towards the future state auditor, a Republican, flipping the existing approach to gain control over the state’s election apparatus. This gambit is akin to shooting an arrow and painting a bullseye around it.

The bill also takes aim at judicial independence. According to the legislature’s new bill, governors filling court vacancies are now forced to pick candidates from the departing judge’s party, again undoing a practice both parties have had for decades and undermining gubernatorial independence.

The bill shortens the time Governor-Elect Josh Stein will have to fill legislative vacancies, limits consecutive appointments, and transfers key powers, such as the ability to appoint chairs of county election boards, to other offices. The cumulative effect is a systematic weakening of the executive branch, effectively neutering its ability to govern.

Although Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill last week, the Republican supermajority has wasted no time trying to overrule him. They have a very short timeline to do so; when the new legislative session begins in early January, the General Assembly will be one vote short of a Republican supermajority. That’s why the Senate has already voted to override the veto, and the House will seek to do so in the week to come. When they convene, House Republicans will have an exceedingly small margin for error: if any one member of the caucus peels off, the override is nearly certain to fail.

The implications of this bill, should it become law, extend far beyond North Carolina. It will normalize exploiting crises to erode democratic principles, disenfranchise voters and entrench power.

It now falls to North Carolinians to ensure their elected representatives respect the choices they made at the ballot box this November. The people of the state should demand accountability from the legislature and a return to serving the public, not partisan interests. The state’s future depends on a collective commitment to these ideals. Anything less is a surrender of the democratic values that define us all.