With North Carolina Elections Under GOP Control, Expect New Barriers to Voting
In a victory for North Carolina Democrats, Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs was sworn in for a new term on Tuesday, days after Judge Jefferson Griffin conceded that he lost the 2024 election for the seat. Griffin’s Republican friends on the high court had ruled to throw out ballots by changing the rules retroactively, prompting a federal court to step in to stop the election theft.
But while Griffin’s concession is great news for voters — and fair elections — Republicans have other maneuvers up their sleeve to undermine democracy. For nearly a decade, they’ve been plotting to take control of state elections — and they may finally have succeeded.
On April 30, the North Carolina Court of Appeals, on which Griffin currently serves, gave Republicans control of election administration in an unsigned “shadow docket” ruling. That means that the GOP will have majorities on state and local boards that run elections and hear post-election challenges, such as the 65,000 challenges submitted by Griffin.
The ruling was handed down by a secret panel of three judges who hear “emergency” petitions. The public won’t know who ruled for a few months. And even though the ruling contradicted several recent state supreme court precedents, it contained none of the judges’ reasoning.
This secret shadow docket panel has completely upended elections and the constitutional separation of powers in North Carolina — which is exactly what Republicans want. Since 2016, when voters ousted Republican governor Pat McCrory, the state GOP has been plotting to take control of election boards. They passed several laws that would have given them control of the board or prevented a Democratic majority. These measures were struck down by state courts as violations of the North Carolina Constitution, which requires the governor to execute the law. But Republicans didn’t stop there.
This secret shadow docket panel has completely upended elections and the constitutional separation of powers in North Carolina — which is exactly what Republicans want.
In 2018, lawmakers made another run at controlling elections. They put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to overturn the state courts’ rulings by giving lawmakers the power to appoint the elections board. It was opposed by all living former governors, Republicans and Democrats, and was soundly rejected by voters, with only 38% in support.
In a complete rebuff of the power grab, voters elected another Democratic governor last year. Still, Republican legislators passed a bill during the 2024 lame-duck session giving the state auditor, one of the few GOP executive branch officials, control of the state and local election boards.
This new law violates the will of voters and the North Carolina Constitution, as interpreted by the state supreme court. A trial court put the law on hold while it decided if it’s constitutional, but the secret panel of three Court of Appeals judges allowed the bill to go into effect.
Auditor Dave Boliek immediately appointed two new board members. One, former state Representative Bob Rucho, oversaw the gerrymandering of election districts to benefit Republicans. He was the plaintiff in the 2017 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that greenlit gerrymandering, a case in which Riggs had represented the voters. The other, Francis De Luca, is a former GOP congressional candidate and the former executive director of a conservative think tank that has played a key role in pushing state policy to the right in recent years.
The board’s new Republican majority promptly fired Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell, a respected and apolitical election administrator, and replaced her with former GOP legislative counsel Sam Hayes.
So far, the state supreme court has refused to act despite the Court of Appeals’ shadow docket ruling undoing its precedents. It’s clear that GOP justices have little regard for the court’s previous rulings. When they took control of the court two years ago, Republican justices immediately reversed recent precedents that protected voting rights. They undid a ruling that banned partisan gerrymandering and allowed lawmakers to redraw districts to give themselves an unfair advantage.
Republicans now have an iron grip on the courts and elections in North Carolina. This is bad news for voters. De Luca claimed that he plans to work on “making voting easy,” but the last time Republicans controlled election boards, they slashed early voting hours and moved polling locations in urban areas. They made voting harder.
There’s every reason to expect that the new Republican-controlled elections board will do everything they can to put up barriers for voters in large, urban counties.
With a GOP majority, local election boards will also have the power to rule on the kind of election “challenges” that Griffin submitted in his attempt to steal an election that he narrowly lost. They’ll be able to accept arguments that certain ballots should be thrown out, even though they complied with all the rules at the time.
Now that Republicans have seized control of the board and slashed the power of Democrats in the executive branch, the best hope for protecting North Carolina’s democracy is getting a pro-democracy majority on the high court. Voters can oust the Republican high court majority in 2028, and the court can once again stop attempted election theft and ban gerrymandering.
The first step is reelecting Justice Anita Earls next year. Republican legislators and election officials will do everything they can to oust Earls. Like Riggs, Earls is a former civil rights lawyer who defeated GOP voter suppression in court. It’s crucial that we keep Earls on the court.
When 2028 rolls around, voters will have the opportunity to oust three corrupt Republican justices who tried to help Griffin steal an election. They can also kick Griffin off the Court of Appeals. Voters, for now, still have the power to save North Carolina’s democracy.
Billy Corriher is the state courts manager for People’s Parity Project and a longtime advocate for fair courts and progressive judges. As a Democracy Docket contributor, Billy writes about voting and election state court cases in North Carolina and across the country.