North Carolina court grants control of elections boards to state auditor

RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — A panel of North Carolina Court of Appeals judges held Wednesday that a law granting the Republican state auditor appointment ability over elections boards can proceed for now.

The decision is in contrast to a ruling last week in a Raleigh court, which found that the General Assembly’s decision to strip that ability from Governor Josh Stein and give it to Auditor Dave Boliek was facially unconstitutional and violated the separation of powers between the branches.

“Because the duty to faithfully execute the laws has been exclusively assigned to the governor, Senate Bill 382 cannot reassign that duty to the auditor without violating the Constitution,” the panel of Raleigh judges said. Republican defendants promptly appealed the decision to the state Court of Appeals to “preserve the status quo.”

The panel of appeals judges stayed the trial court’s judgment Wednesday, allowing the auditor to gain control over appointments until an appeal is resolved or the court issues another decision. They did not explain the rationale for their intervention, and the names of the judges on the panel will continue to be sealed for 90 days, although the decision was unanimous.

Should the state’s highest court not intervene, the law will go into effect Thursday, and Boliek will have the ability to make appointments to elections boards on both the county and state level, chosen from lists of candidates provided by the state Democratic and Republican parties. This ability may potentially shift the boards to a Republican majority, from a 3-2 Democratic majority.

Stein, who has appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, blasted the intermediate court’s decision on X, formerly known as Twitter, as pertaining to the ongoing legal challenges over a North Carolina Supreme Court associate justice seat. Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin challenged thousands of ballots in his race, which he appears to have lost by a 734 margin, and has pushed his way through state and federal courts to attempt to get ballots removed from the final vote count and potentially flip the results of his election.

“Today’s Court of Appeals decision about the Board of Elections poses a threat to our democracy and the rule of law. The Supreme Court should not allow it to stand,” Stein said.

“I fear that this decision is the latest step in the partisan effort to steal a seat on the Supreme Court,” he continued. “No emergency exists that can justify the Court of Appeals’ decision to interject itself at this point. The only plausible explanation is to permit the Republican state auditor to appoint a new State Board of Elections that will try to overturn the results of the Supreme Court race.”

A representative for the auditor’s office did not immediately return a request for comment made outside of normal working hours regarding the auditor’s imminent plans for the elections boards. Boliek said in a statement earlier in the week that he is prepared to manage the elections boards and appoint board members who “uphold the law and put their focus toward counting legal votes, efficient tabulation, and consistency across counties.”

In his appeal, Stein urged the state Supreme Court to intervene, saying that failing to pause the appeals court’s order would cause “irreparable harm and destroy the last peaceable status quo among the parties,” whereas legislative defendants wouldn’t be harmed if the trial court’s decision remained in effect.

Berger said in a statement that Stein is “desperately grasping to keep a partisan stranglehold on the board of elections,” and Hall called the state elections board a “national embarrassment,” commending the appeals court’s decision.

Until this shift, the party of the governor has controlled the majority on the board for over a century, despite challenges by Republicans in recent years to flip the majority on the board through attempts to revoke the governor’s appointment abilities and change the number of seats.

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