The NC GOP's election duplicity bill

Stein should veto the bill because Republican have no credibility on election integrity.

Republicans in the legislature passed a “sweeping elections bill” that is now on Governor Josh Stein’s desk. Conservatives argue that North Carolina needs the law to protect the integrity of our elections. The problem is that Republicans have no credibility on election integrity. On the contrary, they’ve spent the past fifteen years trying to corrupt the system and rig results. There’s no reason to believe this bill has any other purpose.

Republicans began by passing the most egregious gerrymander in the country when they took power in 2011. They gave themselves veto-proof majorities in both chambers in a state that splits evenly among Democrats and Republicans. Former Republican Representative David Lewis, chair of the Redistricting Committee, infamously said, “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.” In other words, Republicans bragged about their ability to rig districts to favor Republicans and undermine democracy.

Two years later, Republicans passed the “monster” voter suppression law that sought, among other things, to limit access to the polls for African American voters. Republicans requested data on the methods most used by Black voters and then attempted to restrict them. The Federal Court of Appeals overturned the law, saying “provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The decision was so well documented that the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.

While Republicans used the specter of fraud to push legislation, they used malicious accusations to cast doubt on the integrity of elections. After Governor Pat McCrory lost his re-election bid in 2016, he cried voter fraud. Fortunately, his claims were so preposterous that his own board of elections shut him down.

Four years later, Donald Trump would make the same false claims about an election being stolen. Today, few if any of the Republicans in the legislature pushing the bill will admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. Integrity, indeed.

By 2024, Republicans had moved from legislation and conspiracy theories to using the courts to reverse election outcomes. Republicans sued to change the rules of the election after the fact in an attempt to steal a state Supreme Court seat in broad daylight. The scheme almost worked when the current partisan Court of Appeals and Supreme Court sided with GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin. They were only stopped after a harsh rebuke from a Trump-appointed federal judge who stated the obvious when he said, “You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done.”

As Griffin and the GOP were busy trying to undermine the will of the voters, Republicans in the legislature moved oversight of the State Board of Elections from the governor’s office to the state auditor after the GOP captured the seat. Auditor Dave Boliek then appointed Republican political operatives to oversee the agency. Today, we’re seeing the fallout from that decision.

Boliek hired former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party Dallas Woodhouse as a liaison to the county boards of elections. But there was a catch. Woodhouse wasn’t working for the Board of Elections — he was working directly for Boliek. Texts indicated that Woodhouse was pushing county boards of elections to eliminate or reduce voting methods preferred by Black voters, including Sunday voting. Sound familiar?

Now, Boliek is throwing Woodhouse under the bus after he deleted texts that should have been public record. The Office of State Auditor released a statement saying, “Mr. Woodhouse informed the Legal Affairs Division that the messages had been deleted from his phone in direct contravention of OSA policy.” Of course he did. Woodhouse is a political operative and knows not to keep incriminating communications around.

But this isn’t about Dallas Woodhouse. This is about Dave Boliek and the GOP. The Republican legislation would give Boliek far more control over monitoring elections. He appointed a lifelong political operative to a position that’s not just supposed to be nonpartisan, but central to our democracy. He also placed another political operative, Francis X. De Luca, as chair of the State Board of Elections. De Luca was a Republican candidate for Congress and before that oversaw independent expenditure campaigns designed to defeat Democrats when he was president of the conservative Civitas Institute.

Boliek either had nefarious intent or remarkably bad judgment. Either way, he’s not qualified to oversee our elections. He’s done nothing to inspire confidence or indicate that he wants our elections to be fair. He certainly never explained these hyper-partisan hires. He should not have more power over our elections.

For fifteen years, Republicans in North Carolina have been assaulting our democracy, rigging districts and attempting to make voting more difficult for people who might disagree with them. They created the myth of rampant voter fraud out of whole cloth to justify making voting more difficult. Their legislation is nothing more than a solution looking for a problem. The incidence of election fraud is minuscule while attempts to undermine our elections are very real and ongoing in Republican circles.

Right now in Minnesota, the My Pillow guy is claiming his Republican primary was stolen from him despite losing by double digits. Destroying the credibility of elections has become a GOP campaign tactic. Whittling away at democracy is the broader strategy.

Josh Stein should veto the legislation. The race for state auditor should be a rallying cry for Democrats in North Carolina in 2028 to truly protect the integrity of our elections. This year, Democrats need to win enough seats to protect Stein’s veto so Republicans can’t give control over the State Board of Elections to the labor commissioner or some other GOP Council of State member in a lame-duck session.