The NC House Elections Committee voted to add party labels to a host of nonpartisan elections. They also approved having governor and lieutenant governor run as a ticket. The latter is a good idea. The former is not.

It makes sense for the governor and lieutenant governor to be from the same party. The lieutenant governor is only going to take power if a sitting governor becomes incapacitated, resigns, is impeached or dies. In such a case, a smooth transition of power is in the best interest of the state. Shifting parties would only cause additional turmoil. In addition, Rep. Bert Jone’s proposal to have governor and lieutenant governor candidates run in primaries still gives voters some influence over their elected officials. It’s a good idea that deserve support.

Making local school board races and appellate court races partisan just adds to the hyper-partisanship that currently plagues our electoral system. Unfortunately, appellate court races have become too partisan because of the dark money that’s flowed into the state from third party interest groups. However, we should be striving to make our judiciary as neutral as possible and certainly not beholden to increasingly partisan interests. Partisan primaries will drive candidates to the court to the right and left and leave judges considering the impact of their decisions on the next primary election. 

Local government should decide whether school board races should be partisan or not, just like they should have control over the redistricting process. Personally, I believe it’s in the best interest of everyone if all local races were nonpartisan. Most local issues are practical instead of ideological and getting smart people instead of partisans elected is good for local government. This move is really just Big Government conservatives flexing their authoritarian muscles again.

Finally, by making the these races partisan, the GOP is hurting the largest growing segment of the electorate–unaffiliated voters. In the not too distant future unaffiliated voters will be the largest group of voters but will have the most prohibitive process to get on the ballot. Currently, for unaffiliated voters to run in partisan elections, they need signatures from 2% of the total number of voters who voted in the last general election. For an unaffiliated candidate to run for Supreme Court, that person would need about 90,000 signatures. Since all the signatures must be from registered voters, that would mean more than 100,000 signatures to account for invalid signatures. That’s a remarkably difficult and expensive task.

Making the governor and lieutenant governor the same party ensures continuity of government in the case of a crisis. Making judicial and school board elections partisan just adds to the current hyper-partisanship that plagues our country and discourages unaffiliated voters, often the least ideological voters, from serving. The legislature needs to fix this bill before it moves forward.

Thomas Mills

Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >