North Carolina: Lawsuit seeks board seats for unaffiliated voters | WRAL

A well-known North Carolina election-law attorney has filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s new Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, arguing that it is unconstitutional because it discriminates against unaffiliated voters by denying them the same right to serve on elections boards as voters who are registered with a political party. The case was filed Tuesday in the Middle District of North Carolina. Under the legislation passed in April by state lawmakers and recently upheld by a three-judge panel, the new state board will consist of four Republicans and four Democrats, appointed by the governor from list of nominees submitted by the two state party chairs. In turn, the new board will select two Democrats and two Republicans, also nominated by their respective parties, to serve on each of the 100 county elections boards.

North Carolina: Change could lead to compromise in push to move up primaries | Associated Press

Both chambers of the General Assembly have agreed that they want to move up North Carolina’s future primary elections for president and statewide offices, but they may have to come up with a compromise about when that change would start. The House on Tuesday voted nearly along party lines to approve a bill that would permanently move the primaries from May to March. But the 71-46 vote came after members agreed to delay the bill’s start date until 2020. Two months ago, the Senate unanimously approved the permanent change, starting in 2018. The measure now returns to the Senate, where lawmakers must decide whether they want to accept the House amendment or force negotiations on a compromise.

North Carolina: Elections officials investigating report of Russian hacking attempts | News & Observer

A news report relying on a newly leaked National Security Agency document says Russian spies electronically infiltrated a company whose voting machine software is used in North Carolina and seven other states. The Russian government then sent “phishing” emails to more than 100 elections officials around the United States just before the election, in an attempt to gain their login credentials, according to the news report Monday by The Intercept investigative reporting website. VR Systems provides voting software used in 21 North Carolina counties, according to the N.C. State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, whose executive director said the agency is “actively investigating reported attempts to compromise” the software.

North Carolina: U.S. Supreme Court again faults North Carolina on voting rights | Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday faulted North Carolina again in a racially tinged voting rights case, upholding a lower court’s ruling that Republican lawmakers mapped state legislative districts in a way that diluted the clout of black voters. But the justices also threw out another ruling by the same panel of three federal judges ordering special elections by November to fill the state legislature seats at issue in the dispute. The high court, with no recorded dissents, sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider whether special elections are necessary. The Supreme Court in January put the matter of special elections on hold while it decided whether to hear the state’s appeal of the ruling.

North Carolina: Supreme Court Affirms North Carolina Redistricting Order | Associated Press

The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down 28 state House and Senate districts in North Carolina because they violated the rights of black voters. But the justices rejected the court’s order to redraw the districts and hold a special election. The action by the justices Monday sends the matter back to the lower court, which could order new districts in time for the regular cycle of elections in 2018.

North Carolina: Rebuked Twice by Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans Are Unabashed | The New York Times

In Washington, efforts by this state’s Republicans to cement their political dominance have taken a drubbing this month. On May 15, the Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina elections law that a federal appeals court said had been designed “with almost surgical precision” to depress black voter turnout. A week later, the court threw out maps of two congressional districts that it said sought to limit black voters’ clout. And it could get worse: Gerrymandering challenges to other congressional and state legislative districts also are headed for the justices. But if North Carolina Republicans have been chastened in Washington, there is scant evidence of it here in the state capital. Quite the opposite: Hours after the court nullified the elections law, for example, party officials said they would simply write another.

North Carolina: Judges uphold law diminishing governor’s elections role | Associated Press

North Carolina judges sided Thursday with Republican legislators who stripped down the election oversight authorities of Gov. Roy Cooper. A three-judge panel unanimously dismissed a lawsuit by Cooper, who challenged the law as unconstitutional. The judges offered no reasons for their decision, issued within hours of hearing lawyers for Cooper and the Republican-dominated General Assembly argue about the law. The lawsuit that is part of the ongoing political battle that began after Cooper narrowly beat incumbent GOP Gov. Pat McCrory last year. GOP lawmakers have sought to defang Cooper’s powers ever since. Cooper plans to appeal the ruling, said his spokesman, Ford Porter.

North Carolina: Will third time be a charm for those who want North Carolina Supreme Court to invalidate election maps? | News & Observer

A challenge to election maps drawn in 2011 that has twice come before the N.C. Supreme Court will return for a third pass before a court that has shifted since its most recent review from a Republican to a Democratic majority. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday issued an order that sent a lawsuit filed by former Democratic state legislator Margaret Dickson for another review by North Carolina’s highest court. The order tells the North Carolina justices to reconsider its 2015 decision upholding the maps in light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that found lawmakers relied too heavily on race when drawing congressional districts in 2011.

North Carolina: Hurricane, vote challenges prompt push for changes to North Carolina election rules | WRAL

Events from last fall might wind up being felt for years to come during North Carolina elections. The State Board of Elections has proposed several changes to elections rules following Hurricane Matthew and the contentious gubernatorial election. One proposed change would give the state elections director emergency authority to change election schedules following a natural disaster or a military conflict involving troop deployment.

North Carolina: Battle over voting rights intensifies | The Washington Post

North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature has worked steadily and forcefully during the past seven years to tilt the state’s election system in its favor, using voting restrictions, favorable district maps and a slew of new policies that lawmakers say are aimed at reducing voter fraud. But at every turn, Democrats and voting rights advocates have stymied their plans, dragging them to court and condemning the GOP actions as discriminatory against the state’s minorities. Instead of giving up — even after two major defeats this month in the U.S. Supreme Court — North Carolina’s Republican leaders are working to push the battle over the ballot box into a new phase.

North Carolina: Judges weigh law cutting governor’s elections oversight role | Associated Press

If judges sign off on Republican legislation that curtails the new governor’s control over state and local elections, future balloting could be wracked with confusion, unethical politicians could go unpunished and campaign finance tricks could continue unabated, Democratic lawyers contend. A three-judge panel of state trial judges on Thursday starts hearing arguments about whether it’s constitutional for GOP legislators to end the century-old control governors had of overseeing elections now that a rival, new Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, is in office.

North Carolina: Justices Reject 2 Gerrymandered North Carolina Districts, Citing Racial Bias | The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down two North Carolina congressional districts, ruling that lawmakers had violated the Constitution by relying too heavily on race in drawing them. The court rejected arguments from state lawmakers that their purpose in drawing the maps was not racial discrimination but partisan advantage. The decision was the court’s latest attempt to solve a constitutional puzzle: how to disentangle the roles of race and partisanship when black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats. The difference matters because the Supreme Court has said that only racial gerrymandering is constitutionally suspect.

North Carolina: Despite high court’s decision on voting law, activists worry about chief justice | The Washington Post

The big win for voting rights activists at the Supreme Court last week came with an equally big asterisk, and provided new reason for jittery liberals and civil rights groups to continue to fret about Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. The justices without noted dissent on May 15 said they would not consider reviving North Carolina’s sweeping 2013 voting law, which had been struck down by a lower court after years of litigation. A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had ruled that the state’s Republican legislative leadership had intentionally crafted the law to blunt the growing political power of African American voters.

North Carolina: Supreme Court won’t save North Carolina voting restrictions, GOP leaders say they will try again with new law | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider reinstating key provisions of North Carolina’s 2013 elections law overhaul, which includes a voter ID requirement and other restrictions on voting. Within hours of the release of the order, N.C. Republican Party leaders were calling for a new law that would incorporate some of the same ideas in a manner that they thought could withstand judicial review. The Supreme Court ruling gave few details about why the justices left a lower-court decision in place that struck down the restrictions, stating they “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

North Carolina: Republicans working on a new voter suppression bill | Slate

On Monday, the Supreme Court dealt a death blow to North Carolina’s notorious voter suppression law, refusing to review a lower court’s decision to block the measure for “target[ing] African Americans with almost surgical precision.” Republicans in the General Assembly, however, responded immediately with plans to introduce a new voter ID bill that mirrors the old, unlawful one. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who opposes voter ID laws, estimates that GOP legislators will pass the bill within ten days. Due to a gerrymander that has been found to be unconstitutionally racist, Republicans dominate the state legislature and will likely override Cooper’s inevitable veto.

North Carolina: Strict North Carolina Voter ID Law Thwarted After Supreme Court Rejects Case | The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday announced that it would stay out of a fight over a restrictive North Carolina voting law. The move left in place a federal appeals court ruling that struck down key parts of the law as an unconstitutional effort to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” As is the court’s custom, the justices gave no reason for declining to hear the case. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a statement noting that there was a dispute about who represented the state in the case and that nothing should be read into the court’s decision to decline to hear it. The law, enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature in 2013, imposed an array of voting restrictions, including new voter identification requirements. It was part of a wave of voting restrictions enacted after a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that effectively struck down a central part of the federal Voting Rights Act, weakening federal oversight of voting rights.

North Carolina: Supreme Court’s Roberts: ‘Uncertainty’ sinks voter ID appeal | Winston-Salem Journal

The U.S. Supreme Court shut the door Monday on North Carolina Republicans’ effort to revive a state law that mandated voter identification and scaled back early voting, provisions that a lower court said improperly targeted minority voters. The justices left in place last summer’s ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the law’s photo ID requirement to vote in person, which the court said targeted African-Americans “with almost surgical precision.” The measure, approved in 2013 by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature in 2013, also reduced the number of early-voting days and prohibited same-day registration during the early voting period. Supporters said the measure was necessary to crack down on voter fraud, but opponents said the changes discourage voting by black and Hispanic residents, who use early voting or same-day registration more than white voters and are more likely to lack photo ID.

North Carolina: Elections agency works to avoid late-night result changes, ineligible felon voters | News & Observer

State election officials say they’re taking steps to avoid some problems seen during November’s election by improving procedures for publishing vote counts and removing active felons from voter rolls. State Board of Elections executive director Kim Strach provided her post-election report to an N.C. House committee Thursday, highlighting some of the upgrades in the works. One Election Night problem was the late counting of early votes in Durham County. Because of difficulties reading the memory cards on voting machines, the county didn’t add early voting totals to online records until nearly midnight – even though the state’s website indicated that most of the county was finished reporting totals.

North Carolina: Governor and GOP legislators back in court over elections board, ethics commission merger | News & Observer

Three judges who already have ruled against one legislative attempt to take away control of elections oversight from the governor’s political party issued an order late Friday that temporarily blocks the latest law with that aim. Gov. Roy Cooper sued Phil Berger, leader of the state Senate, Tim Moore, speaker of the state House, and the state on Wednesday over a law that again calls for the merging of the state elections board and ethics commission and changes the makeup, staffing and function of the two groups. Legislators enacted the bill this week, overriding the governor’s veto of a law that would create an eight-member board to oversee the state’s elections that would be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. For the first two years, the board would keep the elections director selected during the Pat McCrory administration.

North Carolina: Prominent Virginia politician implicated in North Carolina GOP voter fraud deceit | Facing South

An elections watchdog is calling for a criminal investigation into whether the campaign of former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, the N.C. Republican Party and their attorneys falsely accused hundreds of citizens of voter fraud in the wake of last year’s election, which McCrory narrowly lost to Democrat Roy Cooper. At the scandal’s center is Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky (HVJT), a prominent Virginia law firm that filed most of the voter challenges. It’s headed by Jill Holtzman Vogel, a three-term Virginia state senator from Fauquier County who’s running for lieutenant governor in the June 13 primary. The firm’s other principals include a former chair of the Federal Election Commission and a former assistant attorney general for the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

North Carolina: Judges back governor over election changes | Greensboro News & Record

North Carolina judges on Friday put a temporary brake on renewed efforts by Republican state lawmakers to curtail the new Democratic governor’s control over state and local elections. A panel of state trial court judges voted 2-1 to stop a new law from taking effect Monday until a more extensive hearing on May 10. The panel’s majority said Gov. Roy Cooper was likely to succeed in challenging a law GOP legislators passed this week diluting the ability governors have had for more than a century to pick election board majorities. State Senate leader Phil Berger blasted the temporary restraining order, saying legislators had responded to the panel’s rejection of an earlier version by tailoring the revamped effort “exactly as they required.”

North Carolina: Why This Woman Who Cast An Illegal Vote For Donald Trump Is Getting A Pass For Voter Fraud | The Huffington Post

A North Carolina prosecutor announced Wednesday that he would decline to bring charges in one of the few cases of voter fraud in the state during the 2016 election. The decision is significant because North Carolina is asking the Supreme Court to uphold a law that would require voters to show photo ID at the polls. Of the 4.8 million votes cast, the incident was the single case of in-person voter impersonation at the polls in the 2016 election in North Carolina ― the kind of fraud the voter ID law would prevent. The 67-year-old woman, whose name is not being released, voted for Donald Trump on behalf of her mother, who died on Oct. 26, weeks before Election Day. The woman told the State Board of Elections that her mother had told her “if anything happens you have my power of attorney and you be sure to vote for Donald Trump for me.”

North Carolina: In 2016, in-person voter fraud made up 0.00002 percent of all votes in North Carolina | Vox

One in nearly 4.8 million. That’s how many fraudulent votes North Carolina’s voter ID law would have stopped in the 2016 election had it not been halted by the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, based on a recent audit from the State Board of Elections. After all this time, the court battles, and the protests that the law would disproportionately hurt minority voters, it turns out the push for voter ID was all to stop just one potentially fraudulent vote out of 4,769,640 cast last November. North Carolina’s voter ID law imposed strict voter ID standards, as well as restricted the amount of early voting days, to stop in-person voter impersonation. A judge halted most of the law last year after concluding that it “target[ed] African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” The audit’s findings expose the lie behind voter ID laws: Republican lawmakers say (in public) that their voter ID laws are meant to stop voter fraud, but actual voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Instead, these laws are seemingly geared — by some Republicans’ admission, in fact — toward making it harder for minority and Democratic voters to cast a ballot.

North Carolina: Literacy requirement for voter registration could be removed from state constitution | News & Observer

Decades have passed since any North Carolina voters have been forced to take a literacy test to vote, but the requirement is still in the state constitution today. “Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language,” Article VI, Section 4 says. The N.C. House voted unanimously Tuesday night to start the process to repeal that line, which was often used to prevent African-American residents from registering to vote.

North Carolina: Republicans override gov’s veto in latest partisan clash | Associated Press

Republican lawmakers have voted to override new Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a bill that reduces his authority over state elections, the latest partisan clash in North Carolina over laws that chip away at executive branch power. The House completed the override Tuesday, a day after the Senate cast a similar vote that exceeded the three-fifths majorities required to enact the law despite Cooper’s objections. The governor has threatened a legal challenge over the law, which takes effect early next week. “Time and again their attempts to rig elections have been found unconstitutional. This bill simply repackages similar legislation that has already been struck down by the court,” Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said in a release, adding the governor “will continue to protect the right to vote and fight for fair elections.”

North Carolina: Senate overrides governor’s veto of elections/ethics boards merger | News & Observer

The state Senate voted Monday night to go ahead with a plan to reconfigure oversight of elections in North Carolina despite a gubernatorial veto. The attempt at a veto override will next be taken up in the House. The Senate vote to override was along party lines, 33-15. Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the elections bill, Senate Bill 68, on Friday, along with House Bill 239, which would reduce the state Court of Appeals from 15 to 12 members.

North Carolina: Governor Cooper vetoes appeals court and elections bills | News & Observer

Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed bills that would cut the state appeals court by three judges and deny the governor’s political party control of the state elections board. The legislature is likely to vote to override the vetoes. House Bill 239 would reduce the state Court of Appeals from 15 to 12 members, which would prevent replacement of three Republican judges approaching mandatory retirement age. Senate Bill 68 would consolidate the state elections and ethics boards. The new board would have eight members, four from each major political party, with a Republican chairman in presidential-election years and a Democratic chairman in midterm-election years. Local elections boards would also be split. A three-judge panel struck down an earlier attempt by Republicans to merge the boards.

North Carolina: Republican Party makes nominations for new overhauled elections board | News & Observer

Republicans’ latest attempt to overhaul the state’s elections and ethics board is still awaiting Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto stamp, but the N.C. Republican Party is already nominating members for the new board. Cooper has said he’ll veto Senate Bill 68, and he has until Friday to do so. It would combine the current State Ethics Commission and State Board of Elections into a single eight-member board, evenly split between the two major political parties. Currently, the state elections board has five members, three of whom are from the governor’s party. The governor would select the members from lists provided by the parties.