Legislative leaders urge federal court to toss unaffiliated voters’ lawsuit | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is CJ Staff.

    Republican N.C. legislative leaders have asked a U.S. District Court to dismiss a lawsuit from unaffiliated voters. Those voters challenge a state law blocking them from serving on the State Board of Elections.

    "Plaintiffs argue that by not allowing unaffiliated voters to serve on the State Board, their First Amendment and Equal Protection rights are violated. However, these Plaintiffs lack standing to bring those claims. And Defendants, members of the legislative branch, who enact but do not enforce laws, are immune from suit for such claims in federal court," wrote attorney Martin Warf, representing the top officers in the N.C. House and Senate.

    "Even if Plaintiffs could overcome these issues, the federal constitution does not support such associational claims, and, these claims run headlong into the North Carolina Constitution, which has been interpreted by North Carolina courts to require that the Governor be able to control the SBOE," Warf added. "Counterbalancing one major party's views and priorities on the Board with that of the other major party's views, therefore, is a rational approach to election administration adopted by numerous other states."

    State law requires the governor to choose the five-member state elections board. He makes his appointments from lists of names provided by leaders of the two major political parties. No more than three board members can be members of the same party. In practice, this means the governor's party holds a 3-2 majority on the board.

    After Democrat Roy Cooper's election to the governor's office in 2016, Republican legislative leaders changed the law twice. First, they created an eight-member elections board with an even split of members between the two major parties. Later, they created a nine-member board with four Democrats, four Republicans, and one unaffiliated voter.

    In both cases, Cooper sued to block the new election boards. State courts struck down both of them. Afterward, the General Assembly reverted to the current board's partisan composition, which predated Cooper's election.

    Unaffiliated voters working with left-of-center activist group Common Cause filed suit last August to challenge the current law.

    North Carolina has more voters registered as unaffiliated than as members of either major party.

    "The state law barring plaintiffs and all other unaffiliated voters from serving on the State Board serves no public or valid purpose but instead is a means to entrench the Democratic and Republican political parties in power and give them exclusive control over the supervision, management, and administration of the elections system," according to the original complaint. "This law is ill-conceived because it renders ineligible a large pool of talented and able citizens from service on the State Board."

    But legislative leaders argued Friday that none of the plaintiffs in the case has demonstrated that the law actually blocked them from serving, or that any of them had tried to serve on a local elections board that does not require party affiliation. "Moreover, given the undefined characteristics of unaffiliated voters, it is hard to find a basis on which Common Cause or the individual plaintiffs can represent more than 2.5 million unaffiliated voters," Warf wrote.

    Lawmakers challenge the unaffiliated voters' argument that they have a First Amendment right to serve on the state elections board. The challenged law "does not prohibit anyone from affiliating - or not affiliating - with any political party," Warf wrote. "The law neither restricts voter choice nor anyone's ability to run for elected office. ... The question is then whether section 163-19(b) infringes upon a First Amendment-protected right to public service. It does not. 'There is simply no abstract constitutional right to be appointed to serve as an election [official].'"

    Warf touts policy benefits of an elections board with members tied to the two major parties.

    "Representation from the Democratic and Republican parties ensures that the policy views on these boards reflect the predominant strains of thought among the public with respect to the administration of elections," he wrote. "To this end, it was rational for the legislature to include the two main parties but not representatives of unaffiliated voters, because unlike the political parties, unaffiliated voters as a collective, have no discernible policy views."

    "The legislature, therefore, could reasonably conclude that reserving board appointments to Democratic and Republican representatives served the purpose of reflecting the public's divergent views on election administration," Warf added.

    At least eight other states have similar election board statutes, according to lawmakers' brief.

    There is no timeline for the federal court to respond to lawmakers' motion.
Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




State government lawyers seek ‘expeditious’ schedule to resolve Leandro issues Carolina Journal, Statewide, Editorials, Government, Op-Ed & Politics, State and Federal Now it is Norway that stops child genital mutilation, puberty blockers


HbAD0

Latest State and Federal

Former President Donald Trump suggested this week that if he becomes president again, he might allow Prince Harry to be deported.
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit a Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic, reportedly the first time a president or vice president has visited an abortion facility.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that the only campaign promise President Joe Biden has delivered on as president is the complete dismantling of the U.S. southern border.
Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day: military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
President Joe Biden’s brother told the Internal Revenue Service that Hunter Biden told him he was in business with a “protege of President Xi,” referring to the leader of China, according to notes by an IRS investigator that were divulged during a congressional interview of Jim Biden.
That’s the question Marguerite Roza of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab sought to answer in a recent webinar on the topic.

HbAD1

The University of Florida has fired all of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) employees and shut down its DEI office.
Glenn Beck: 'When the United States government can come after individuals, that's when you know our republic is crumbling.'
Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) reportedly blasted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “stonewalling” details about the illegal immigrant accused of murdering Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia college student.
“The Biden administration's plan in the Middle East is to hand over power to the Palestinian Authority, which literally pays the families of terrorists who murder Jews.”
Two Democratic members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation are ranked among the most likely to be picked off in 2024, according to a new analysis from Roll Call.

HbAD2

Former President Donald Trump dominated the North Dakota Republican Caucus on Monday as he continues to inch closer to officially securing the party’s presidential nomination.

HbAD3

 
Back to Top