North Carolina’s bizarre politics are a journalist’s dream...and a friend-of-democracy’s nightmare.
How anyone who doesn’t actually live in the Tar Heel State can even begin to understand what the hell is going on down here in the midst of (ex-) Governor McCrory’s bloody tooth-and-claw battle to retain power, despite losing on Election Night, is...well...quite beyond me.
Here, then, is a very high-level view of what has transpired thus far in Republicans’ gambit to nullify the election in which they lost control of two of the three branches of state government. And, more importantly, what might happen next.
What Has Happened So Far:
1. Democrats outnumber Republicans by 4-to-3 in North Carolina. But, coming into this election, the NC-GOP controlled all three branches of state government: the governorship (Pat McCrory), both houses of the General Assembly, or GA (thanks to complacent Dems forgetting to vote in the 2010 mid-term election), and the state Supreme Court (4 hyper-partisan R justices versus 3 Ds). Shameless gerrymandering of state and Federal districts at the hands of the new Republican majority back in 2010 locked in their new dominance for what looked like it might prove to be eternity.
2. Election night 2016 smacked state Republicans upside the head with two surprises they never saw coming. First, African American jurist Mike Morgan, a registered Democrat, unseated incumbent pasty white Republican Supreme Court justice Bob Edmunds, handing Dems a 4-to-3 majority on the state’s highest court. Morgan’s surprising win — by a stunning 8 point margin — is widely attributed to the fact that among all of the ballot’s races, his was the only one in which the Democratic candidate’s name was listed first on the ballot.
3. But an even greater shocker was the race for governor. One-term incumbent ‘Potty’ Pat McCrory (R) led his Democratic challenger, Attorney General Roy Cooper (D), through most of that long night by a margin approaching 50,000 votes. But late that night a bolus of 94,000 votes issuing from true-blue Durham County suddenly flipped the election, handing Cooper a razor-thin 5,000 vote win. Reporting of those Durham County votes was delayed due to a trivial (and properly dealt with) flaw in the state’s vote tabulating software — a flaw known to the state, and to the rocket scientists at vendor Election Systems & Software , since at least 2004.
4. Whining about the Trumped-up spectre of voter fraud, McCrory refused to concede his defeat, promising to “examine every vote.”
5. In the days immediately following the election, GOP attorneys and operatives fanned out across the state in a highly orchestrated gambit, filing election protests with at least 50 of the state’s 100 county boards of elections, falsely citing dead voters, double-voters, out-of-state voters, felon voters, and illegal alien voters bused into the state by the thousands, via transporter beam, from Alpha Centauri. Essentially all of these protests were summarily rejected (by county boards dominated 2-to-1 by Republicans) for lack of evidence. Meanwhile tea party “think” tank, Civitas Institute (bankrolled by McCrory’s Koch Lite sugardaddy, Art Pope), filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the election’s results on similarly Trumped-up grounds.
6. Two of those rejected county protests — one for highly urbanized, diverse, and overwhelmingly Democratic Durham County, and the other from rural (and 37% black) Bladen County — were appealed by McCrory campaign attorneys to the State Board of Elections, which is dominated 3-to-2 by hyper-partisan Republican McCrory appointees. In the first of two quasi-judicial hearings last week the state board upheld the Durham protest and ordered the county board to recount those 94,000 late ballots in a nearly-impossible four days. But, surprisingly, in last night’s hearing the state board rejected the Bladen County protest, following disastrous testimony that appeared to reveal the protest filer, McCrory dupe Leslie McCrae Dowless, was (i) himself involved in absentee ballot application-harvesting activity substantially similar to that which he was protesting, and (ii) pretty much ignorant of the charges alleged in his own protest filing (which was drawn up for him by McCrory campaign attorney “Steve somebody.” In an astonishing turn of events, protestor Dowless even pled his 5th Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. With so much blood in the water, Democratic attorneys Irv Joyner and David Hamilton feasted on Dowless’s entrails until the board hastily got Dowless the hell out from in front of the room’s TV cameras by dismissing his protest. Republican board member Baker joined Democrats Kircker and Malcolm in that vote to dismiss, while the more reliable McCrory lackeys on the board (chairman Whitney and secretary Amaroso) held fast, losing 3-to-2. And thus the board graciously permitted some 400 Bladen County African Americans to actually, you know, vote in the election after all— a stunning outcome here in the New Jim Crow South.
7. Why so much fuss and feathers over a mere 400 votes? Because currently Cooper’s lead over McCrory stands at just about 10,200 votes. If that 10K+ vote lead stands when the state board finally certifies the election’s results (if it ever does — see below), McCrory will have no right to demand a statewide recount. But if Cooper’s final margin falls below 10K votes...well, let’s just say it’s Christmas for McCrory, opening the door to any number of Republican shenanigans during a chaotic and hotly contested hand-to-eye recount of the state’s 4.8 million ballots.
How McCrory Might Still ‘Win’ This Thing:
1. A bizarre and little-known provision of state election law provides that if an election’s result is “contested” (a word that is undefined in the statute) the state’s legislative body, the General Assembly, may step in and itself decide the election’s winner by a simple majority vote of the legislators. [Yes, that’s completely nuts. Forget about it, Jake; it’s Chinatown]. Given that Republicans hold a super-majority of seats in both houses of the legislature, the result would be a foregone conclusion. While no one is quite sure how this could play out in practice, it is widely suggested that there are two possible paths to this result: (i) if the State Board of Elections conveniently fails its statutory obligation to certify the election results by December 9th (just 5 days away as I write), or (ii) if the Republican leadership of the General Assembly can screw up its courage to just step in and do it, without any better excuse. There’s no question that state Republicans are currently salivating over this option. The only real question, at this point, is whether they have the balls to face the inevitable chaos (and perhaps even violence) that is, historically, the inevitable result of any such coup d'état. For all we know, they’re polling National Guard commanders’ loyalties as we speak.
2. Yet another insane provision of North Carolina law empowers the General Assembly to expand the Supreme Court from its current seven seats to nine if it damn well feels like it. Currently the court is 4-to-3 Republican, but will flip to 4-to-3 Democratic in January when Mike Morgan replaces losing incumbent Bob Edmunds. If the NC-GOP’s good ol’ boy attorneys can figure out some Trumped-up way to quickly drive a lawsuit, protesting the election results, up to today’s Supremes, they might-could will ‘win’ the election there. But even if that battle drags into January or beyond, they still have that other ace up their sleeves — simply expand the court from seven seats to nine, thus enabling McCrory himself to appoint two new justices to the court, tipping its bench 5-to-4 Republican.
You say you simply can’t believe that something so incredibly brazen could possibly happen? Think again. GOP legislators are setting this scheme into motion as we speak.
Stay woke, y’all — even (maybe especially) you non-Tar Heels. If the GOP’s schemes succeed, what’s happening down here in North Carolina right now is a harbinger of what will happen nationwide in 2018 and 2020. Recently freed of inconvenient moral qualms, the Trump-drunk GOP — both in NC and nationwide — would love nothing more than to replace democracy with oligarchy.