NC court blocks law stripping governor of election powers

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina's Supreme Court on Monday again blocked a state law approved by Republicans that strips the new Democratic governor of powers to oversee elections.

A lower appeals court briefly let the law to take effect last week, allowing a revamped state elections board to meet for the first time Friday. It's one of the changes passed in late December that shift power over running elections away from Gov. Roy Cooper.

"We are pleased the Supreme Court has put the injunction back in place until the judges can hear and decide the full case" early next month, Cooper spokeswoman Noelle Talley wrote in an email.

The law ends the practice of allowing the governor's political party to hold majorities on all state and county elections boards. Instead of Democrats holding sway over running elections and resolving voting disputes, elections board positions would be evenly divided between major-party partisans.

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Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/127d3fd616fb44a98dd96e02d861abf0/nc-court-blocks-law-stripping-governor-election-powers

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By EMERY P. DALESIO
Feb. 13, 2017 6:43 PM EST

[LisaM]

1. Good, but it really begs the question....

why are Republicans so determined to clog up the courts with this kind of nonsense? Going after every single piece of minutiae on abortion, issuing hastily-drawn up travel bans, passing bull***t laws like this in North Carolina, one stupid thing after another instead of trying to actually serve their constituents with good laws, and trying for good governance of this country. Roads, bridges, schools, jobs, don't they care about any of those things?

[babylonsister]

2. I think NC is a test state; then this very movement will sweep the nation. nt

[wildeyed]

4. NC has gerrymandered democracy out of existence.

NC is basically a 50/50 state, yet the GOP has a veto proof majority in the general assembly. It's so corrupt! The districts are so gerrymandered that conservative lawmakers more afraid of a far right primary challenge than they are of a Democrat in the general. They legislate accordingly. The bullshit will continue until we fix districts and make them competitive again.

[dragonlady]

6. There is hope

Wisconsin has been in the same predicament that you describe. Recently the federal appellate court upheld a finding that the gerrymandered districts are unconstitutional. The state legislature is ordered to come up with a new map by November 1 so that the 2018 election can be held in fair districts. As expected, the Republicans are fighting it (with taxpayer money) but there is reason to believe that the U.S. Supreme Court will find for fairness.

[wildeyed]

12. Yes!

NC has a similar case in the pipeline. Our statehouse districts are racially gerrymandered so they are already unconstitutional and will be re-draw soon. We hope. Until then the nightmare we call the NC General Assembly will continue to grind unjust legislation in our faces.... Sigh. They will be slightly better if they are re-draw without using racial bias. But only slightly. The real answer is to do away with partisan gerrymandering altogether. It's taxation without representation, the way things stand.

[NickB79]

7. Because they know their days are numbered

Their base is aging and dying off by the thousands daily, and their popularity with minorities and Millenials is in the single digits. This is their last real chance to get their way, repurcusions be damned.

They know they're going extinct, so they're having one last bender.

[onetexan]

8. They're neither going away that quickly nor easily

There were plenty of brainwashed young people who voted for agent orange & straight party GOP this past elections. Many of course were brought up in deeply conservative families and indoctrinated into that line of thinking. Richard Spencer the alt-right idiot is a son of a physician. He was a doctoral candidate at Duke and is only 38 years old. At a young age he was already espousing extremist views.
Then of course there is also rural America, who will continue to breed under-educated, right leaning kin. With agent orange having emboldened their kind they've now come out of the wood works and already wreaking havoc upon civil society, and they're not going away any time soon.

[mdbl]

14. Which is why it keeps getting worse

I have given up on the "they are dying out" theory since Reagan was in office. Hitler seems to reincarnate into many people, for some evil reason and this strange country seems to be convinced to vote against their own best interests. Seems there is no way out of this.

[cstanleytech]

10. Because they are gambling on winning in the next election cycle and until then

they want to prevent the Dems from doing anything that might mean the Repugnants would have to choose candidates who are not bigoted assholes which would be hard for the Repugnants to do since so many Repugnants are in fact bigoted assholes.

[Dustlawyer]

11. It is an all out war to give control to the Plutocrat's and corporations!

They have been working towards this for 35 years or more. The U.Scott. Chamber of Commerce and the Koch want direct control of everything!

[Turbineguy]

3. It's not important who votes.

It's who counts the votes that's important.

That was Stalin's view, and it's the GOP view.

[Va Lefty]

5. Exactly

[Amaryllis]

9. Yep. And Dems seem to have a really difficult time grasping that.They keep the focus on who's voting

[40RatRod]

13. The good old boy's club is starting to see the light.

Please make it so in Georgia too.