To steal an election

by | Nov 21, 2016 | Editor's Blog, North Carolina | 9 comments

For six years, Republicans in the General Assembly have undermined the democratic process in North Carolina. They began by overriding county and municipal governments’ redistricting plans by redrawing local political districts like the Wake School Board and Buncombe County Commission to make them more favorable to Republicans. Without local approval or support, they changed nonpartisan elections to partisan and moved odd-year elections to even years. After Democrats swept the Wake County Commission in 2014, Republicans swiftly moved to change the way commissioners are elected, adding safe Republican districts and double bunking Democratic incumbents. Republicans are clearly willing to rig elections.

It’s time to start closely watching the North Carolina race for governor. Governor Pat McCrory and his team are making moves to invalidate the outcome. They’re trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process and question the results. They want to use a little known provision in the state constitution that allows the legislature to determine the winner of an election if the results are unclear.

On election night, Attorney General Roy Cooper had an approximately 5,000 vote lead over McCrory. The governor refused to concede, saying all of the votes needed to be counted. The state still had about 60,000 provisional ballots, including votes from people who said they registered to vote at the Division of Motor Vehicles but are not on voter rolls. The court ordered those votes to be counted. In normal years, about half of provisional ballots are thrown out.

As the provisional ballots began to be counted, Roy Cooper saw his lead grow. In response, McCrory’s team started filing complaints of voter fraud in counties across the state. Initially, they filed 12 complaints, but it grew to more than 50. To add confusion, McCrory’s spokespeople cited the number of complaints, ones they or their allies filed, to question the election’s validity. That’s truly Orwellian.

The Republican-controlled county boards of election across the state are rejecting McCrory’s complaints. In response, the governor’s team asked the State Board of Elections to strip power from county election boards and review all the complaints themselves. While all county boards of elections are controlled by Republicans, the State Board of Elections are actual McCrory appointees. Fortunately, the SBOE rejected their request.

So far, the complaints of voter fraud have turned up almost no fraud and certainly no systemic problems. With 3 million people voting early, a few died between the time they cast their ballot and election day, but they weren’t trying to undermine the integrity of the election. In Wake County, the second largest county in the state, one felon who has not completed his sentence had his/her ballot dismissed. That’s one out of the 530,967 ballots cast. That’s not evidence of the “rampant fraud” McCrory’s campaign claims.

Even if all were validated, the complaints that McCrory is filing do not contain enough votes to overturn Cooper’s growing lead. But that’s not the point. The point is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election so McCrory’s campaign can ask the legislature to resolve the election by a vote. To win, the governor needs the Republicans in the General Assembly to go along with them. Given their history, there’s no reason to believe that they won’t. It’s up to the press and the people to stop them. Pay attention.

9 Comments

  1. John Paar

    Mr. McCrory, you lost. Get over it and concede the election. We already have to live with the worst candidate for President in our lifetime, who has won using the obsolete Electoral College, although he has lost the popular vote by more than 2 million.

  2. Edison Carter

    Governor McCrory: Just go as you lost fair, and square as the voters of this state simply just “aren’t into you”, and your lies and A.L.E.C. ways. It’s not like you need the job, or the money as you’re set for life.

    Beat it, deadbeat.

  3. Linford

    The point is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election so McCrory’s campaign can ask the legislature to resolve the election by a vote. To win, the governor needs the Republicans in the General Assembly to go along with them. Given their history, there’s no reason to believe that they won’t. It’s up to the press and the people to stop them. Pay attention.

  4. Keith Thomson

    Cooper’s victory margin is more than fifteen times the margin of Bush vs Gore in the Presidential election contest in Florida in 2000. Without voter suppression tactics the margin would have been greater by far.

  5. TY Thompson

    It’s gratifying that Republicans on State and County BOE’s see themselves as servants of the public first and partisans afterwards. I hope Governor Cooper appoints equally high minded Dems to the NC SBOE, whom are devoted to law and procedure above all else.

    As for McCrory, there are clear reasons why he lost and HB2 isn’t it. Were it so, Dan Forest would have lost too, as he was more of a proponent of HB2 than McCrory ever was. McCrory lost support from the Daughters of the Confederacy over his flag flap but he also lost a lot of support from Republican supporters of ousted State Party Chairman Hasan Harnett, as they hold the Governor responsible for that coup, and excessive meddling in internal Party affairs. And the result is made manifest when you look at his vote totals versus those of Trump, Burr, and Forest.

  6. Elizabeth Devereux

    McCrory is such a wuss. Just suck it up and admit you lost, gov.

  7. R.L.Newsom

    The NC audits, in which a randomly selected precinct in each county is selected for a hand recount, have “gone dark” in the press and the public consciousness. These were intended to use the “miracle” of random sampling to detect any widespread chicanery and verify for all the integrity of the system. Please help get these made public as the law demands. Especially the manner in which the random numbers are selected, which also needs to be transparent.

  8. Yojji

    I wonder what all these complaints are about? Are they looking for the Betty Smiths and Tim Johnsons that voted more than once? Or maybe a guy named Tom Miller voted and they found an obituary for someone with the same name? Why, if in-person voter fraud is so common, couldn’t McCrory and his cronies find any when they really, really needed it to defend their voter suppression – oops, I mean voter ID law?

    One mildly positive thing about all these complaints is that having to check them out will probably reinforce the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the voter suppression – oops, I mean voter ID law they found unconstitutional imposes “cures for problems that did not exist.” and that “the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.”

  9. Albert B

    If the results of this race are declared illegitimate, then the results of every race, from the President to dog catcher, should be declared illegitimate. Neither will happen.

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