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.

North Carolina: Voting rights group wants investigation of Republican voting protests | Winston-Salem Journal

A voting rights group called Tuesday for state and local officials to investigate whether allies of North Carolina’s former governor and the state Republican Party broke laws when hundreds of people were accused of voter fraud or absentee ballot irregularities last November. “We are calling on them to enforce state and federal laws that protect the right to vote and the integrity of the election process,” Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, said at a news conference. More than 50 postelection protests were filed in 37 counties soon after Election Day for the extremely close race between then-Gov. Pat McCrory and Democratic challenger Roy Cooper. Many of the protests alleged that ballots had been cast by convicted felons, dead people or those who voted in another state. The protests sought to have the ballots thrown out.

North Carolina: Republican Lawmakers Dilute Democratic Governor’s Powers | Associated Press

After being rebuffed once by judges who determined lawmakers went too far, Republican legislators on Tuesday tried a second time to dilute the power of North Carolina's new Democratic governor to run elections. In separate votes, the state House and Senate voted along party lines to trim the power governors have had for more than a century to oversee elections by appointing the state and county elections boards that settle disputes and enforce ballot laws. The state elections board has had five members appointed by the governor, with the majority being members of the governor's party, since 1901, according to state records. Gov. Roy Cooper has promised to veto the new legislation, which lets the governor appoint all eight members of an expanded elections board — but from lists provided by the two major political parties.

North Carolina: Veto fight ahead over elections board rewrite | WRAL

State legislative leaders and Gov. Roy Cooper are likely headed for another veto fight, this time over a measure that would reconfigure the state's oversight of elections, ethics and lobbying. Lawmakers sent the bill to Cooper's desk Tuesday. In December 2016 during a special session, state lawmakers approved a proposal to do away with the existing State Board of Elections and replace it with the state's ethics board, half appointed by the governor and the other half appointed by state lawmakers. That law also gave Republicans control of all local elections boards in each election year. Cooper sued to block the law, saying it violated the separation of powers in the state constitution, and a three-judge panel agreed last month. Senate Bill 68 is an attempt to revive some of that enjoined law, crafted to avoid the constitutional pitfalls that plagued the first version.

North Carolina: Senate puts brakes on ethics/elections merger bill | News & Observer

The state Senate on Monday night voted not to go along with a House bill that would merge the ethics and elections commissions. Instead, the bill was sent to a conference committee of Senate and House members to work out a compromise. Gov. Roy Cooper said last week he would veto the bill because it curtails voting rights. It also deprives the governor of the power to control the boards through appointments.

North Carolina: Governor threatens veto as legislature tries again to combine ethics, elections boards | News & Observer

The state House on Thursday approved a bill wresting control of elections boards from the political party of the governor. Earlier in the day Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said he would veto the bill if it comes to his desk and sue to block it if necessary. The House vote was 68-42. The proposal is on a fast track, having just been made public Tuesday afternoon – inserted into an unrelated bill so that it could move directly to the full Senate rather than work its way through Senate committees. Senate Bill 68 would merge the State Ethics Board and the State Board of Elections, and evenly divide membership of the new board between Republicans and Democrats. The bill would let the governor appoint all eight members, choosing from lists provided by the each of the major parties.

North Carolina: House OKs elections, ethics rewrite; Cooper threatens veto | Associated Press

The state House voted along party lines Thursday to retool a Republican law struck down by a court that combined elections and ethics duties into one board, which its chief proponent says he hopes would settle the matter without legal appeals. But Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who sued over the original law that he argues prevented him from overseeing elections, said he'll veto the reworked measure if it reaches his desk and threatened legal action again if necessary "to protect the integrity of our electoral system." The bill "is the latest GOP attempt to curtail voting rights in North Carolina? - and I intend to fight it," Cooper wrote online hours before the House voted 68-42 for the measure, which now goes to the Senate for consideration, possibly next week.

North Carolina: House GOP tries again on overhaul of elections oversight | News & Observer

House Republicans are rushing a bill through the legislature that would aim to salvage last year’s attempt to take away control of elections boards from the political party of the governor. A law passed in a 2016 post-election special session and signed by former Gov. Pat McCrory would have consolidated the state elections and ethics boards and evenly divided membership of the new board between Republicans and Democrats. But a three-judge panel struck down that law last month as an unconstitutional encroachment on executive authority. The 2016 law would have altered a longstanding practice giving a governor the power to appoint three members from his party to preside over elections as well as two members from the other party. Instead, the governor would have appointed four members and legislative leaders would have appointed the other four. In December, incoming Gov. Roy Cooper sued over those provisions, which were aimed at shifting some of the governor’s authority to the state legislature.

North Carolina: Lawmakers revive plan for combined state elections, ethics board | WRAL

A little more than two weeks after a three-judge panel threw out a new state law combining oversight of state elections and ethics enforcement, leading Republican House members are pushing a revised version of the plan. The House Elections and Finance committees on Tuesday approved a committee substitute for Senate Bill 68 less than 18 hours after Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, stripped out the bill's original half-page of language calling for student attendance recognition programs in local school districts and replaced it with 15 pages of policies and procedures for the proposed Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. Lewis, the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, beat back an effort by Democratic members of the committee to delay voting on the new bill, saying the House needed to take a floor vote on it before lawmakers take time off for Easter late next week.

North Carolina: Federal judge rules lawmakers’ attempt to change Greensboro election process unconstitutional | News & Observer

A federal judge on Monday overturned a legislative redrawing of the Greensboro City Council districts, calling the maps unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles stated in her ruling that the action taken by the Republican-controlled General Assembly in July 2015 established one racially gerrymandered district and unjustly packed too many Democratic-leaning voters into several districts, weakening their overall voting power. The Greensboro redistricting plan was sponsored by Republican Sen. Trudy Wade but she claimed legislative immunity and refused to testify at the trial earlier this year about why she introduced the 2015 plan. It surfaced in the same legislative session that the General Assembly attempted to change election districts for the Wake County commissioners. Both bills drew much criticism and speculation that the changes were power grabs designed to elect more Republicans.

North Carolina: Veto override means voters will know judges’ party affiliations | News & Observer

Voters casting ballots for judges next year will know the political parties of the candidates. Republicans who control the General Assembly say that gives voters helpful information. Democrats say it politicizes the courts. House Bill 100 makes Superior Court and District Court elections partisan, completing a change that the legislature began with appellate courts including the state Supreme Court. On Thursday, the state Senate with little discussion overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of HB 100 by a vote of 32-15, with two Republicans voting against the override: Sen. John Alexander of Raleigh and Sen. Danny Earl Britt of Robeson County. The House had voted 77-44 the day before to override the veto. The measure will restore party primaries for trial-court races. Political affiliations will be included on the general-election ballot.

North Carolina: Local voters falsely accused of fraud seek changes in election protest process | News & Record

A group of residents have filed a letter with the State Board of Elections asking to change a process that’s used to dispute the validity of someone’s vote. Dozens of people in North Carolina were accused of illegally voting in the 2016 election — either by being a convicted felon who shouldn’t have voted, by voting in multiple states or by another means. Called an election protest, it can be filed by any registered voter or candidate, and simply must be done in writing with the accuser’s name, address, phone number and signature. It also must state the basis for the challenge. Guilford County had nine allegations of people voting in other states, said Charlie Collicutt, Guilford County Board of Elections director. Those protests were dismissed due to lack of evidence. Another eight protests involved allegations of convicted felons who voted, Collicutt said. Four were found to be valid. The other four were not; they involved people convicted of misdemeanors or who had served their sentences and re-registered to vote.

North Carolina: Revamp of election board and ethics commission unconstitutional, judges rule | News & Observer

The N.C. General Assembly’s attempt to revamp the state elections board and ethics commission weeks before Democrat Roy Cooper was sworn in as the new governor violates the state Constitution, a three-judge panel ruled on Friday. The judges also found unconstitutional the legislature’s shift of managerial and policy-making employees from former Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration to positions where it’s more difficult to replace them. But the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s attempt to have a say in who joins Cooper’s Cabinet was not found to be a violation of the separation of powers clause in the state Constitution. To date, the state Senate has approved three of the appointments Cooper has made with hearings for others set for next week. The rulings from Superior Court Judges Jesse Caldwell, Todd Burke and Jeff Foster come nearly two weeks after a daylong hearing inside a Campbell University law school courtroom.

North Carolina: Roy Cooper vetoes GOP bill making judge elections partisan | News & Observer

Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday vetoed his first bill, one that would restore partisan judicial elections. The bill’s author said the General Assembly would vote to override the new governor’s first veto. The legislation, House Bill 100, would make District Court and Superior Court judicial candidates go through a party primary. Under the bill, general election ballots would include the candidates’ party affiliations. Candidates who aren’t registered with a political party would need to go through a petition process to get their names on the ballot. Superior Court elections were switched from partisan to nonpartisan in 1996, and state leaders made the same change for District Court in 2001.