Judges strike down GOP law taking away elections boards appointments from NC governor
In a win for Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a court struck down a Republican-crafted law that would have stripped the governor of his appointments to elections boards.
The new law also would have required the State Board of Elections and all county election boards to have an even number of Republicans and Democrats, raising concerns about potential deadlocked votes.
Under current law, election boards are structured to have three members of the governor’s party and two from the other major party.
A panel of three Superior Court judges, two Republicans and one Democrat, sided with Cooper, finding the GOP-enacted law to be unconstitutional. That same panel — Edwin Wilson, Lori Hamilton and Andrew Womble — had already temporarily blocked the law from taking effect in November.
In a seven-page order released Tuesday, the judges wrote that the Republican effort to remove Cooper’s power to appoint members of state and county elections boards was “the most stark and blatant removal of appointment power” since previous cases over appointment powers like McCrory v. Berger and Cooper v. Berger.
Lawyers for Cooper had argued that the new law unconstitutionally stripped the governor of executive power and transferred it to the legislature. Legislative leaders, however, argued that it was within their powers to shift the composition of the boards and outside the court’s jurisdiction to rule on.
