A federal court ruling Monday in favor of North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs (D) looks likely to bring to an end the months-long GOP effort to overturn her win in last November’s race.
But the saga still isn’t officially over — and exactly how it plays out from here could depend on the actions of a state election board whose membership also has become a subject of fierce partisan warfare.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, a Trump appointee, ordered the board to certify Riggs’ win. But he put his ruling on hold for seven days to give Judge Jefferson Griffin (R) a chance to appeal.
An appeal by Griffin would go to a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit — a court with a liberal-leaning majority.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the board confirmed that all the votes challenged by Griffin will be included in the final count, unless his appeal succeeds. No voters will need to cure their ballots, the board said, as a state court had earlier ruled they would need to do.
But the board’s makeup is set to change.
On Wednesday morning, it will swear in three new Republican members — Francis X. De Luca, Robert Anthony Rucho and Stacy Clyde Eggers IV — giving the GOP a majority on the board. And it will appoint a new executive director to replace Karen Brinson Bell, who has largely worked to protect voter access.
De Luca is the former president of the conservative Civitas Institute. Under his leadership, the group challenged the results of North Carolina’s 2016 gubernatorial election, won by Democrat Roy Cooper, in court. Rucho, a former state senator, helped pass the state’s extreme pro-GOP gerrymander and was named as the defendant in a major 2016 Supreme Court gerrymandering case. Eggers is being reappointed to the board.
At a time when defying court orders and refusing to certify election outcomes has become all-but routine for the GOP, fair election advocates say they’re watching closely to ensure the board, even under Republican control, follows the court’s directive to certify the race.
“If members of the Board refuse to certify the election results as ordered by the federal court, they would be in contempt of a federal court, and we would anticipate legal action to hold them accountable,” said Ann Webb, policy director at Common Cause North Carolina, adding that members who refuse could face legal challenges to remove and replace them.
The new members are being sworn in this week even as the legal question of who can appoint them remains unresolved.
North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature passed a measure last year that took away Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s power to select board members and transferred that authority to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. Stein filed suit, arguing the new law violated North Carolina’s constitution.
Last week, an unnamed panel of three North Carolina Court of Appeals judges granted Republicans’ request to stay a lower court ruling that halted the legislation, clearing the way for Boliek to appoint new members. Griffin is one of 15 judges who sit on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
Before appointing the new members, Boliek promised to pick people “who uphold the law and put their focus toward counting legal votes, efficient tabulation, and consistency across counties.”