Cooper vetoes bill creating evenly split state and local elections boards
Under Senate Bill 749, North Carolina lawmakers would appoint 400 county elections officials and eight State Board of Elections members ahead of the 2024 election.
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Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday vetoed a bill that Republicans are pursuing to create evenly split state and local elections boards.
"The legislative takeover of state and local elections boards could doom our state’s elections to gridlock and severely limit early voting,” Cooper said in a veto message, referencing a state procedures that could prompt counties without early voting location agreements to only have one voting site across the county.
“Courts have already ruled the ideas in this bill unconstitutional, and voters overwhelmingly said no when the legislature tried to change the constitution," Cooper added.
Previous efforts by Republicans to strip the governor of his appointment powers have been rejected in state court and by voters. But with a new 5-2 conservative state Supreme Court, GOP lawmakers are hoping for a different outcome.
Under Senate Bill 749, state lawmakers would create an all but guaranteed 4-4 partisan split on the State Board of Elections and 2-2 split on the state’s 100 county elections boards before the 2024 election. That would change the makeup of the current 3-2 Democratic majority state elections board and current five-member county boards.
The bill also would move the State Board of Elections from the Department of Administration to the Secretary of State’s Office—an idea current Democratic Secretary of State Elaine Marshall strongly opposes.
Since 1985, North Carolina governors have appointed state elections board members from a list given to them by the party chairs of the two political parties having the highest number of registered voters, Democrats and Republicans. No more than three members are allowed to be from the same party, effectively giving the governor’s party majority control of the state board.
Since Cooper was elected governor in 2016, GOP lawmakers have repeatedly sought to change the makeup of the state elections board.
Most recently, voters opposed a proposed constitutional amendment to create an evenly split state elections board by a 23-point margin.
While Democrats see SB 749 as an effort to create gridlock and usurp the Democratic governor, Republicans say they are trying to reduce partisanship on courts by forcing both parties to reach agreement.
"North Carolinians deserve to have the knowledge and confidence that their state and local boards of elections are operating in the best interest of the voters, not a particular political party,” State Sen. Warren Daniel, a Burke County Republican said in a statement responding to Cooper’s veto.
“Single-party control has led to distrust and skepticism among voters. Voters should be asking themselves why Gov. Cooper is so desperate to maintain his partisan grip on the State Board of Elections. I look forward to once again overriding Gov. Cooper's veto and establishing truly bipartisan boards of elections in North Carolina."
House Republican Speaker Tim Moore has said he doesn’t expect his chamber to hold any votes until the week of Oct. 9 at the earliest. If the veto is overridden along an expected party-line vote, the measure would take effect going into North Carolina’s 2024 primary. Fourteen of the 17 bills Cooper has vetoed this session have thus far been overridden.
Republicans have yet to hold override votes on the proposed state and local elections board shakeups and two measures Cooper vetoed last month: Senate Bill 747 and Senate Bill 512.
SB 747 makes a number of changes to state elections, including freer movement of partisan poll watchers at voting sites and eliminating the three-day grace period for mail-in ballots to be received by county elections offices. SB 512 eliminates the governor’s appointment powers on several important state boards and commissions.
All three vetoed bills are expected to be resolved in a courtroom, as previous efforts by lawmakers to seize gubernatorial appointments and change elections have been met with resistance from voting access groups and Democratic and Republican governors.
One bill Cooper won’t veto: the state budget, which is set to take effect on Tuesday after the governor lets it become law without his signature. Cooper and state Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley announced earlier this week that Medicaid expansion would be implemented Dec. 1, as Kinsley had previously stated as the next backup date if a budget weren’t enacted by the end of August.