""Yep. Trump does still have much control within the GOP. See YouTube of the NBC News video in yours
Ohio. One state in which Trump got his electoral guy in. LaRose has equivocated on the election result, still he got Trump's support.
By —Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Associated Press
Politics May 3, 2022 9:57 PM EDT
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose won the Republican nomination for his second term in office on Tuesday, defeating conservative challenger John Adams, who had questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
LaRose will face Democrat Chelsea Clark, a suburban Cincinnati City Council member and businesswoman, in November’s general election. Clark ran unopposed in the primary.
Despite Adams’ open questioning of the 2020 results, former President Donald Trump had endorsed LaRose in the race. LaRose adopted some of Trump’s talking points on voter fraud before winning Trump’s endorsement, even though he had previously defended the validity of the 2020 election.
The Ohio election was the first of several closely watched races for secretaries of state in the midterm elections. The post grew in importance on the national political scene as Trump endorsed candidates who backed his lies that massive voter fraud cost him reelection.
Primaries for the top election offices will follow over the next few weeks in Nebraska, Idaho, Alabama and the presidential battleground of Georgia. While Indiana also holds a primary Tuesday, nominees for secretary of state and some other offices won’t be decided until party conventions in June.
November 8, 2022 Secretary of State Midterm Elections 2022 Races for secretary of state gained national attention in 2022 as a result of former President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to publicly question and deny the outcome of the 2020 race he lost to President Joe Biden. The secretary of state is, in nearly all 50 states, the top elections official, responsible for oversight of the vote and more. Trump endorsed candidates in a number of races, including in states that are expected to be pivotal 2024 battlegrounds, who similarly deny or question the 2020 election.
Reminds of -- Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is unquestionable [...]On the eve of the primary election on August 1st, in a muggy warehouse bar in Phoenix, Ms Lake whipped up the crowd against “those bastards back there”—the media, of which, as a television presenter, she was a member for two decades. At the same rally, Abe Hamadeh, the party’s nominee for attorney-general, declared that “we all know that our elections have been hijacked; our justice system has been corrupted.” And yet the most hardcore of the lot is Mark Finchem, a leading “stop the steal” proponent who has previously admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers militia. He attended the January 6th riot (but maintains he did not enter the Capitol) and has said that Mr Trump would not have lost the state in Arizona had he been in charge of its elections. He is now the party’s nominee for secretary of state. If democracy dies in America, it will start in the desert. P - The election of the Trump-appointed slate means that the “rule of law is teetering” in Arizona, according to Bill Gates (not that one), a Republican member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. In other times a man like Mr Gates, a Harvard-educated lawyer and businessman who supports tighter voter-identification laws and low rates of taxation, might have aspired to statewide office, too. But with openness to electoral nullification a new litmus test for such candidates he counts himself out. He says his party has a tumour which is metastasising, and that its nature has changed fundamentally. “We’ve become a European far-right party.” https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169866970
Voters in about two dozen states will be deciding who will be their state’s next chief election official this year. In three politically important states —- Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas — the position will be filled by whoever wins the governor’s race. In New Hampshire, the decision will be made by the state Legislature — currently controlled by Republicans.
LaRose, a former Green Beret and ex-state senator, had supported Trump in his inaugural run for president and was part of a team that handled logistics for Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
Adams, an Army and Navy veteran and former state lawmaker, had criticized LaRose for his role in postponing the March 2020 primary during the coronavirus pandemic.
That month, as concerns about COVID-19 accelerated, LaRose directed all 88 Ohio county boards of elections to comply with the state health director’s order the night before the March 17 primary to close polls to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. He rescheduled in-person voting for June 2.
That timeline was later challenged in court by the Ohio Democratic Party, which advocated for casting all remaining votes by mail.
Lawmakers ultimately set a new, almost exclusively mail-in primary election for April 28, 2020, over LaRose’s wishes.
This year, LaRose found himself in the primary spotlight again because of his dual roles as the state’s elections chief and as a GOP representative on the seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission, charged with drawing new legislative maps. Because the Ohio Supreme Court repeatedly shot down proposed redistricting maps as unconstitutional gerrymanders, the state is holding a partial primary Tuesday, with state legislative races being decided later.
In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, LaRose said, “Elections are run better and more honestly than really I think they ever have been.” Months later, he said in an interview what has proved true in state after state — that voter fraud is rare.
This February, LaRose shifted his tone on Twitter, saying the “mainstream media is trying to minimize voter fraud to suit their narrative” and
“President Donald Trump is right to say that voter fraud is a serious problem.” Trump endorsed LaRose in April.
Adams said he ran for the state elections post because he didn’t believe Trump had lost the 2020 election.
“Why am I running for secretary of state?” Adams said at a campaign event last month. “Well, we had an election two years ago, and I woke up the next morning and I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me. There’s no way that Trump lost. No way.'”
Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth contributed to this report.
The election-denying Republicans who aided Trump’s ‘big lie’ and got promoted
"Yep. Trump does still have much control within the GOP."
Reading these little profiles isn't easy. They really are terrible anti-democratic activists. Or just stupid while ambition enough to really believe Trump's bid lie.
More grinning, in most cases, photos of the dicks are inside.
In 2022, many Republicans who embraced election denialism were re-elected and, in some cases, elevated to higher office
The fight for democracy is supported by guardian.org
Alice Herman, Carlisa N. Johnson, Rachel Leingang, Kira Lerner, Sam Levine and Ed Pilkington [..link foe each author inside..]
Thu 9 Mar 2023 22.00 AEDT
Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election brought the US to the brink of a democratic crisis. Refusing to concede his loss to Joe Biden, he attempted to use every lever available to try and throw out the results of the election, pressuring state lawmakers, Congress and the courts to declare him the winner.
Those efforts didn’t succeed. But Trump nonetheless created a new poison that seeped deep in the Republican party – a belief that the results of US elections cannot be trusted. The belief quickly became Republican orthodoxy: it was embraced by Republican officeholders across the country as well as local activists who began to bombard and harass local election officials, forcing many of them to retire. The January 6 attack on the US Capitol – in which thousands stormed the building, and five people died as a result – was the starkest reminder of the potential violent consequences of this rhetoric.
In 2022, several Republicans .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/republicans .. who embraced election denialism lost their races to be the top election official in their state. But at the same time, many Republicans who unabashedly embraced the idea and aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the election were re-elected and, in some cases, elevated to higher office.
Here’s a look at how some of those who tried to overturn the 2020 election have since been promoted into positions of power:
Members of Congress
Kevin McCarthy
Before House minority leader
Now Speaker of the House
One of the most prominent Republicans to vote against certifying the 2020 election, McCarthy now sets the GOP agenda in the House and will likely block any legislation to protect voting rights.
McCarthy was one of 147 House Republicans who voted to reject Biden’s election victory in January 2021. Then the House minority leader, McCarthy privately criticized Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, but quickly backed off from calling for his resignation because of fears of retribution from the Republican party.
When Republicans took control of the House in the 2022 midterms, McCarthy became the presumed next speaker of the House. The only thing standing in his way was a group of 18 other election deniers who repeatedly cast their ballots against him, forcing a total of 15 votes before McCarthy was able to secure the total he needed to become speaker.
Steve Scalise
Before US congressman
Now House majority leader
The highest-ranking Republican to sign onto a supreme court lawsuit challenging the election results. Scalise was unanimously elected to serve as the No 2 ranking Republican in the House in 2023, a position that allows him to help set the party's agenda.
Scalise was the highest-ranking Republican to sign onto a US supreme court amicus brief trying to get electoral votes from key swing states rejected. He was also one of the 147 Republicans to vote against certifying the 2020 election results.
In November, he was easily re-elected to a ninth term to represent his Louisiana district in Congress. He was unanimously elected House majority leader last year, making him the No 2 ranking Republican in the US House.
Scott Perry
Before US congressman
Now US congressman (re-elected)
Perry was a key Trump ally as the former president sought to overturn the election. He was re-elected in 2022 and now sits on the powerful House oversight committee.
Perry has served as a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania since 2013. He is the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and is a staunch supporter of Trump. He played an instrumental role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and to send a slate of fake electors to Washington, a plot that’s factored into federal investigations after the January 6 insurrection. Perry introduced Trump to Jeffrey Clark, who wrote a draft of a letter to officials in six states suggesting they select alternative electors. The FBI seized Perry’s cellphone last year as part of a criminal investigation into the fake elector scheme.
Despite the active investigation, Perry was re-elected to Congress in November with 54% of the vote and was appointed to the US House oversight committee, the chamber’s primary investigative committee.
State legislators
Jake Hoffman
Before Arizona state representative
Now Arizona state senator
After serving as one of Arizona's fake electors, Hoffman was elected to the Arizona state senate in 2022, where he chairs two key committees.
Kern lost his re-election bid as a state representative in 2020, but earned a state senate seat in 2022 after he was at the Capitol on January 6. He served as a fake elector.
Kern lost his election in 2020, but returned to the Arizona legislature in 2022, winning a seat as a state senator. His win came after he attended .. https://www.azmirror.com/2021/05/05/where-was-anthony-kern-on-jan-6/ .. the Stop the Steal rally on January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol, after he signed on to a slate of fake electors and volunteered at the so-called audit, a review of ballots after the 2020 election.
Harris questioned election results and led an unsanctioned canvass of voters after the 2020 election. She now sits on the elections committee in the Arizona state house.
A first-time representative, Liz Harris gained prominence in Arizona Republican political circles by questioning election results and leading an unsanctioned canvass of voters after the 2020 election.
After leading a lawsuit at the supreme court to throw out the electoral college votes of several states Biden won, Paxton was re-elected to a third term in November. He is pushing state lawmakers to give him unilateral power to investigate voting crimes.
Paxton was one of Trump’s key allies after the 2020 race. He led a lawsuit at the US supreme court to try and get the electoral college votes of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan thrown out as part of an effort to keep Trump in power. He was easily re-elected to a third term in November.
During his time in office, Paxton has made prosecuting election fraud a priority, but his office has turned up few cases (voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States). After a rebuke from Texas’s highest court, he is seeking expanded authority from the legislature to prosecute people for election crimes.
Burt Jones
Before Georgia state senator
Now Georgia lieutenant governor
One of Georgia’s 16 fake electors, Jones was elected lieutenant governor in 2022, a position that gives him power over the GOP-controlled state senate.
Georgia state senator turned lieutenant governor Burt Jones aided in amplifying false claims of mass election fraud in Georgia following Biden’s win in the state. Jones denied the validity of election results in 2020 and served as one of 16 fake electors from the state. Jones’s actions as a false elector led to his inclusion in ongoing investigations by both the Department of Justice and local Fulton county prosecutor Fani Willis.
In 2023 Jones assumed office as the newly elected lieutenant governor of Georgia following a campaign filled with attempts to downplay his role in the 2020 elector scheme and distance himself from Trump. As lieutenant governor, Jones holds power over the state’s senate. Jones maintains a prominent platform that he uses to steer clear of election debates, instead focusing on legislation ranging from public safety to economic development.
Robert Spindell
Before Commissioner, Wisconsin elections commission
Now Commissioner, Wisconsin elections commission (reappointed)
After serving as one of Wisconsin's 10 fake electors, Republicans re-appointed Spindell to a second term as one of six commissioners on the Wisconsin elections commission, the body that oversees voting in a critical battleground state.
In 2021, Republicans reappointed Spindell to a second term on the Wisconsin elections commission, the six-member body that oversees elections in the state. He has since bragged about lower turnout among Black voters in Milwaukee, prompting Democrats to call for his removal from the body.
[Insert: Bragged about. Imagine. Real pricks. All of these people.]
Chuck Gray
Before Wyoming state representative
Now Wyoming secretary of state
After baselessly calling the 2020 election fraudulent, Gray was elected Wyoming's chief election official.
Chuck Gray has called the 2020 election fraudulent and campaigned on his concerns about the integrity of the state’s elections. He said he wants to ban ballot drop boxes, transition to all-paper ballots and clear the office of employees who do not agree with his vision.
The Republican lawmaker who co-chairs the panel that deals with state election law put forward a motion to remove election functions from the secretary of state’s office and instead give them to a separate operating agency. But the effort didn’t gain widespread support.
Wes Allen
Before Alabama state representative
Now Alabama secretary of state
After supporting a lawsuit to get legitimate votes thrown out, Allen was elected Alabama's top election official.
In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Allen, then an Alabama state representative, supported a lawsuit brought by Texas that tried to sue four other states for alleged election “irregularities” responsible for Trump’s defeat. The suit presented no evidence, and was thrown out .. https://www.texastribune.org/2020/12/11/texas-lawsuit-supreme-court-election-results/ .. by the US supreme court.
Campaigning to become Alabama’s secretary of state, Allen promised that he would restrict access to the ballot box by banning mail-in voting, reining back early voting and imposing strict voter ID requirements. As one of his first acts since taking office in January, he removed Alabama .. https://apnews.com/article/politics-alabama-district-of-columbia-privacy-11ce75ad3f0273fe07c3e7ca10d64fcc .. from a data-sharing scheme known as the Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric). Eric has become the target of rightwing conspiracy theories that claim it is a leftwing plot to rig elections. In fact, more than two dozen states participate in the network, many of them Republican-controlled, as a way of ensuring the accuracy of voter rolls.
State party officials
Kristina Karamo
Before Private citizen
Now Michigan GOP chair
Karamo rose to prominence after falsely claiming she witnessed fraud after the 2020 race. She was elected chair of the Michigan Republican party in 2023, where she'll set priorities for the party in a major battleground state.
In February, the Michigan Republican party chose .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/19/election-denier-michigan-republican-party-kristina-karamo-trump .. Karamo as party chair over Matthew DePerno – a conservative lawyer who also promoted false claims of election fraud during the 2020 presidential election. In light of her win, Karamo wrote on Facebook that she would “stop the Democratic party’s totalitarian agenda in Michigan”.
Karamo has yet to concede her 2022 run for secretary of state.
Dorothy Moon
Before Idaho state representative
Now Idaho GOP chair
Moon questioned the results of the 2020 election during a failed bid to be Idaho's top election official. She was elected chair of the state GOP in 2022.
A former state lawmaker, Moon openly questioned Biden’s victory in the 2020 race, with no evidence of wrongdoing. “No, I think there was a big problem when we noticed at 11 o’clock at night all of the battleground states decided to go to bed and then they were going to start back up at 8, 9 or 10 in the morning,” she said in 2022, according to the Idaho Capital Sun .. https://idahocapitalsun.com/2022/04/26/two-of-three-idaho-gop-secretary-of-state-candidates-deny-biden-won-2020-election/ .. . “In my lifetime, I had never seen that happen nor had most Americans who stay up that late to watch for the results.”
Brown centered his campaign for secretary of state in 2022 around Trump's 'big lie'. He lost that race but then was elected state GOP chair at the party's convention in 2023.
Brown, a construction contractor who has served as a county commissioner, ran unsuccessfully for Kansas secretary of state in the GOP primary. His campaign was centered on Trump’s baseless claim that voter fraud swung the 2020 election and unfounded doubts about election security. He vowed to ban ballot drop boxes and to use his office to prosecute voting crimes. He attempted to blame then secretary of state Scott Schwab for failures in his role as election administrator. In response to Schwab’s claims that elections run smoothly in Kansas, Brown asked: “Because he said so, or because he can prove it?”
Cletathe cheata, N Carolina - As 2024 Voting Battles Heat Up, North Carolina G.O.P. Presses Forward
"Yep. Trump does still have much control within the GOP. See YouTube of the NBC News video in yours [...]Lawyer [insert Mar. 25, Cleta Mitchell] Who Plotted to Overturn Trump Loss Recruits Election Deniers to Watch Over the Vote Mar. 2, 2023 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171344479"
When losing on all policy fronts what do you do? Lie. Cheat. Try to steal. The Trump GOP way.
Republicans, whose edge in the state has narrowed in recent years, have gone on offense politically, leading to clashes over voting access and control over elections.
North Carolina has grown increasingly competitive in recent elections. Donald J. Trump won the state by just over a percentage point in 2020. Veasey Conway for The New York Times
By Nick Corasaniti
Reporting from Asheville, N.C. July 2, 2023, 1:30 p.m. ET
A closely watched political fight is developing in North Carolina over voting rights and control of elections, as Democrats aim to recapture a presidential battleground and Republicans look to win back the governor’s office.
Much as Georgia, Florida and Texas drew an outpouring of national attention and political cash as Republicans moved to restrict voting in the heated months after the 2020 election, North Carolina is poised for headline-grabbing confrontations over nearly every lever of the electoral apparatus.
In the Republican-led legislature, the State House is considering two bills passed by the Senate that would sharply alter how elections are run, adding voting restrictions and effectively neutering the state elections board, which is now controlled by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. And in a looming redistricting clash, the newly conservative State Supreme Court has ordered lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional and state legislative maps, which will most likely be far friendlier to Republicans.
In North Carolina, every little edge could matter: The state, despite a long string of Republican presidential victories interrupted by Barack Obama’s 2008 triumph, has grown increasingly close. Donald J. Trump squeezed by in 2020 by just over a percentage point .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-north-carolina.html , and President Biden’s allies have signaled .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/05/15/biden-north-carolina-florida-2024-election/ .. that they plan to invest in the state in 2024, seeing it as potentially winnable. Mr. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and other Republican candidates have already held events in North Carolina as they contend for their party’s nomination.
“North Carolina is one of the states that have both of the factors that exacerbate this,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, referring to Republican attempts to wield more power over voting and elections. “It is a battleground state and a state that has a history of discrimination in voting.”
She added, “It is definitely one of the most critical states to be worried about.”
Seismic shifts in North Carolina politics cleared the runway for Republicans to go on offense. They now have veto-proof legislative majorities after a Democratic representative defected to the G.O.P. .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/us/politics/tricia-cotham-north-carolina.html .. in April, limiting what Mr. Cooper can halt. And conservatives captured the State Supreme Court in last year’s elections, upending it from a 4-to-3 liberal lean to a 5-to-2 conservative advantage.
Republicans gained veto-proof majorities in the North Carolina General Assembly this spring, and last year they won control of the State Supreme Court. Travis Dove for The New York Times
Behind the scenes, a network of right-wing activists and election deniers led by Cleta Mitchell .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/08/us/politics/voting-laws-restrictions-republicans.html , a lawyer who played a key role in efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, has been meeting with North Carolina lawmakers, pushing its priorities and helping shape certain provisions.
Across the country, Republicans continue to try to tighten voting laws, arguing that they are needed to protect “election integrity” and pointing to voters’ Trump-fueled worries about election fraud.
So far this year, at least 11 states have passed 13 laws .. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-june-2023 .. adding such restrictions, according to the Brennan Center. That is a slightly slower clip than in 2021, when Republican-led legislatures passed a flurry of voting laws, often in response to election lies spread by Mr. Trump and his supporters.
The 2024 G.O.P. Presidential Candidates[inside]
North Carolina has a particularly tortured past on voting rights. Under the Voting Rights Act, parts of the state were forced to obtain federal clearance to change voting laws because of their history of racially discriminatory election rules. More recently, in 2016, a federal court struck down a Republican-led voter identification law .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/us/federal-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolina-voter-id-provision.html , saying it had targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Republicans have defended the latest measures. State Senator Warren Daniel, one of the primary sponsors of the bill to change voting laws, said on the chamber floor that the measure “increases confidence and transparency in our elections.” He added that certain changes, including a provision requiring that all absentee ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day, would bring North Carolina in line with many other states.
Democrats, however, have denounced the voting proposals, with one state senator, Natasha Marcus, going so far as to call them a “jumbo jet of voter suppression.” During final debate on the bill, she said it “includes a lot of problematic things that are going to dissuade people from voting, throw out ballots, and suppress the votes of certain people in a way that I think is discriminatory and anti-democratic.”
A key provisionwould effectively eliminate same-day voter registration and replace it with a system in which voters would cast provisional ballots, then be required to follow up and verify their identities. Only some forms of identification would be acceptable: Data from the State Board of Elections found that in the four general elections since 2016, over 36 percent of voters who used same-day registration had provided IDs that the new law would not allow.
Gov. Roy Cooper at an abortion-rights rally in downtown Raleigh, N.C., in May. Republicans will seek to reclaim the governor’s office next year. Kate Medley for The New York Times
In 2016, when Republican state lawmakers tried to eliminate same-day registration .. https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/Opinion_4_25_16.pdf , a Federal District Court found that it was “indisputable that African American voters disproportionately used” that method of voting. Black voters, the court found, made up 35 percent of same-day registrants in the 2012 election, while representing only 22 percent of the electorate.
The new legislation also makes mail voting more complicated, adding a requirement that voters’ signatures be verified and a “two-factor” authentication process that would be unique to North Carolina and has left voting experts confused as to how it would work.
As in other states, far more Democrats in North Carolina now vote by mail, with Mr. Trump and his allies instilling a widespread Republican distrust .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/us/politics/early-mail-voting-republicans-trump.html .. of the practice. In the 2022 midterm elections, more than 157,000 people in the state voted by mail. Forty-five percent were Democrats, and 35 percent were independents.
As Republican lawmakers wrote the legislation, they received outside help.
Three G.O.P. lawmakers, including Mr. Daniel, met in May with Ms. Mitchell, the Trump-allied lawyer, and Jim Womack, a leader of the North Carolina Election Integrity Teams. That organization is part of a national network of right-wing election activists .. [ out excerpt .. Republicans have long said their goal is “election integrity,” but a spate of recent proposals suggests clear, and sometimes strikingly specific, political aims. National Republicans recently sought to change the rules for a single race in Montana — for the U.S. Senate — to tilt the scales toward the Republican candidate. In Ohio, Republican state lawmakers are seeking to make it harder to pass a ballot initiative, just as a coalition of abortion rights groups is collecting signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/08/us/politics/voting-laws-restrictions-republicans.html .. coordinated in part by Ms. Mitchell, who declined to comment.
The two activists pressed the lawmakers on their laundry list of changes to election laws, including measures on same-day registration, absentee ballots and maintenance of voter lists, according to a video in which Mr. Womack summarized the meeting. The video was obtained by Documented, a liberal investigative group, and shared with The New York Times.
“Same-day registration, we’re all in agreement, violent agreement, that same-day registration will now be a provisional ballot,” Mr. Womack said in the video of the meeting. “So if you’re going to same-day register, it’s going to give you at least a little bit of time, maybe 7 to 10 days, to have a chance at researching and challenging that voter under the law as opposed to where it is now, where it’s less than 24 hours’ opportunity to do that.”
Mr. Daniel declined to answer questions about the role Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Womack played in drafting the bills.
Republicans have defended their proposed voting measures, saying that they will increase confidence in elections. Kate Medley for The New York Times
A 2017 law aiming to restructure the state election board was struck down by the State Supreme Court. Now that the court is more conservative, Republicans have resurrected the effort.
Currently, Mr. Cooper appoints all five members of the board, but only three can be Democrats. Under the Republican proposal, the board would have eight members, all appointed by state lawmakers — four by Democratic leaders and four by Republican ones.
State Senator Paul Newton, the bill’s Republican sponsor, introduced it as a measure “intended to take partisan advantage out of elections administration entirely.”
The bill would all but certainly cause deadlock on many major election issues — a prospect that has alarmed election officials and democracy experts.
The current election board, after reports of harassment of election officials in 2022, stepped in with rules limiting access for poll watchers, a move that angered conservatives.
And there is one big unknown: What would happen if the new election board deadlocked over the certification of an election?
That possibility is unaddressed in the bill. Phil Berger, the Republican leader of the State Senate, told The News and Observer that any such deadlock would probably send the matter to the courts, where decisions could depend on the partisan lean of the judge or court in question.
“That’s a tell right there,” said Robyn Sanders, a counsel at the Brennan Center. “It seems pretty clear to me that it was deliberately designed so that there would be those kinds of situations.”
Nick Corasaniti covers national politics. He was one of the lead reporters covering Donald Trump's campaign for president in 2016 and has been writing about presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns for The Times since 2011.
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