Press Release: Victory: North Carolina Republicans Override Gv. Cooper’s Anti-Election Integrity Vetoes

For Immediate Release: October 10, 2023

Unified GOP House-Senate supermajorities enact critical bills protecting the right to vote in free & fair elections

Washington, D.C. – The North Carolina General Assembly today voted to override two of Democrat governor Roy Cooper’s recent vetoes of legislation making the state’s elections more secure, transparent, and accountable. Senate Bill 747 and Senate Bill 749 are now law.

Importantly, Senate Bill 747 contains a number of critical ballot and voter integrity provisions—including election records retention, poll worker protections, voter list maintenance, signature verification, and a ban on the private financing of local election offices used for partisan voter turnout—and was significantly strengthened by the House after a fumbled attempt in the Senate earlier this year.

Senate Bill 749 reforms the state and county election boards by requiring members be evenly split between Democrats and Republicans and appointed by the legislature. In effect, the new law helps avert the perception of partisan advantages while promoting bipartisan confidence in election fairness and outcomes.

Only about half of North Carolina voters presently believe elections are fair and accurately tallied. According to a recent survey by Rasmussen Reports, more than half of U.S. voters doubt the next presidential election will be conducted fairly.

ETI conducted a comprehensive grassroots education and outreach campaign in 2023 to help pass Election Integrity that earns the trust of North Carolina voters.

National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued the following statement:

“Every voter should have faith in honest elections in which every legal ballot is cast and counted fairly, openly, and equally. With supermajorities in both chambers and a recently entrusted state Supreme Court free from its most radical elements, Republicans should be applauded for standing up for Election Integrity in a unified repudiation of Governor Cooper’s politically motivated vetoes. We thank the House and Senate and the bills’ champions for their diligence throughout a lengthy process, and urge their continued attention to these critical issues next legislative session so voters are equipped with the confidence and certainty they deserve.”

Senate Bill 747 Improvements:

• Prohibits private, non-governmental funding (including in-kind donations) of election activities (e.g., “Zuckerbucks”).
• Retention of election records for 22 months to comply with the NVRA.
• Provides clarifications to authority and restrictions for poll observers.
• Same-day registrant addresses are checked and returned mailings will trigger retrieval of voted regular ballots.
• Extends absentee ballot challenge period to five days after election day.
• Polls will close at 7:30PM on election day and all absentee/mail-in ballots must be received by that time.
• Makes it a misdemeanor crime for anyone other than a Board of Elections to affix a tracking code to absentee ballot request forms.
• Provides a new process for removing non-citizens from voter lists.
• Implements a pilot test for signature verification on mail-in ballot envelopes.

Background:

Presently, North Carolina’s voter lists are in disarray, with as many as 14 percent of registrants (one million) having been identified as duplicates or ineligible (1 out of 7 voters). Astonishingly, there is no statutory requirement to remove duplicate voter registrations from the state voter list until such voters contact the Board to request that they be removed.

Mail-in voting is exploited by unaccountable dark money organizations, which print hundreds of thousands of ballot request forms with bar codes for the purpose of illegally identifying and tracking those who are voting by mail—skirting state law which precludes early disclosure of those voting by mail.

According to the State Wide Election Integrity Reporting System (SEIRS), poll observers are being denied the freedom to observe, inspect, and report, nor is there parity in partisan representation for election observers during early voting, as required by law.

Thousands of voters are permitted to show up to register and vote a regular ballot on the same day during early voting, which is immediately scanned and counted without address verification.

The Election Transparency Initiative, a partnership between the American Principles Project (APP) and Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America, was organized to combat federal H.R. 1 and H.R. 4 legislation and advocate for state-based election reforms that voters can trust.

A Victory for Students in North Carolina

September 25, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Earlier this year, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina declared a “state of emergency” as part of his fight against school choice.

 

What’s remarkable is that he engaged in that rhetorical excess even though he sent at least one of his kids to a private school.

But this column will not focus on his hypocrisy, even though his two-faced behavior is despicable (and common).

Instead, we are going to celebrate the fact that his state-of-emergency stunt was a total flop. The North Carolina legislature just approved universal school choice (details here) and Gov. Cooper meekly is allowing the law to go into effect.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about this great development.

North Carolina on Friday became the tenth state to approve universal school choice. …North Carolina created the Opportunity Scholarship program in 2013, but this budget increases funding from $176.5 million to $520.5 million by the 2032-33 fiscal year. It also opens up eligibility to all North Carolinians, though the amount of the scholarship declines as income rises. …In May, when legislators signaled their intentions, Gov. Cooper released a video declaring a “state of emergency.” …he said, “that the Republican legislature is aiming to choke the life out of public education.” The emergency stunt did nothing but make the Governor look weak. It also highlighted his double standard. Mr. Cooper was happy to choose private school for one of his daughters. But when the legislators were ready to give North Carolinians the same choice, suddenly it was an attack on public schools. …Parents want better education choices for their children. …North Carolina’s vote is a big victory—for parents who want better schools for their children and the Republicans who fought to provide that choice.

Given the deterioration of government schools, this is great news.

 

And it’s part of a great trend. Since the beginning of 2021, a growing number of states have adopted universal or near-universal school choice programs.

• West Virginia
• Arizona
• Iowa
• Utah
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Indiana
• Oklahoma

P.S. North Carolina also deserves credit for making big progress on tax and spending issues in recent years.

New NC Supreme Court Majority Overturns Prior Majority’s Unconstitutional Interference in Redistricting

Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky / May 11, 2023

In a detailed, 146-page opinion by Chief Justice Paul Newby, the newly composed North Carolina state Supreme Court vacated and overturned a prior decision by the same court that was a prime example of political interference by activist judges, who were fully prepared to ignore the law and the constitutional limitations on their authority............ 

In a 4-to-3 decision issued in February 2022, the majority—all judges who had been elected as Democrats—held that partisan gerrymandering violated the free elections, equal protection, free speech, and free assembly clauses of the state constitution, overturning prior precedent cited in the lower court decisions that partisan redistricting did not violate the state constitution and there were no judicially manageable standards in any event...........But something else very important happened in the November elections: Two of the Democrat elected North Carolina justices who were in the original majority were defeated in their reelection bids and were replaced by two Republican judges, swinging the court from a 4-to-3 Democratic majority to a 5-to-2 Republican majority............To Read More....

My Take - The Democrats have practiced blatant partisan redistricting in every state where they had the power to do so, and thought it was just fine and wonderful.  However, what was fine and wonderful when they did it is now "shameful manipulation of fundamental principles of our democracy and the rule of law.”.   

What remarkable hypocrisy and as usual, their hypocrisy is accompanied by vacuous self-righteous indignation.   But their outrageous emotional protestations are meaningless according to the  Constitution, which gives total and complete authority to the state legislatures regarding redistricting.    

While the courts have done so in the past, in point of law, they absolutely have no right to interfere with the legislature's prerogatives on redistricting.  That falls under the purview of state legislatures in that arena, not the judicial or the executive branches. 

 

Candidate For The Craziest State Supreme Court: North Carolina

February 06, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

If you ever wonder what kind of rulings we might get if the progressive Democrats some day achieve full control of the U.S. Supreme Court, you can try looking to some of the state Supreme Courts that come under Democrat control. One of my favorites is the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

North Carolina is a purple state, and generally tending more to red than blue. But the justices of its state Supreme Court are elected. In 2016, in a nominally “non-partisan” election, the Democrats took control of the Court by a narrow 4-3 majority. Meanwhile both houses of the state legislature have been controlled by Republicans since 2011. The Governor has been a Democrat since 2016.

Before going further, I should mention that after 2016 the Republican legislature amended the election law for court seats to allow candidates to declare party identification. Then there were two elections for Supreme Court justice in November 2022, both involving seats previously held by Democrats. The Republicans won both of those races — likely reflecting voter reaction to the shenanigans of the Court during six years of Democrat control. As of now, the Court has flipped to a 5-2 Republican majority.

With that background, here is the headline from yesterday’s New York Times: “On North Carolina’s Supreme Court, G.O.P. Justices Move to Reconsider Democratic Rulings.” It seems that the newly-constituted North Carolina Supreme Court has wasted no time in granting reconsideration of two major decisions that came down from the prior Court just a few weeks ago. From the Times:

An extraordinary pair of orders by North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Supreme Court is highlighting how the partisan tug of war has pervaded the state’s courts and, by extension, the nation’s. On Friday, the court moved to rehear two major voting rights cases that it had previously decided, one striking down a gerrymandered map of State Senate districts and another nullifying new voter identification requirements.

In The New York Times spin, it’s a group of highly partisan Republicans abusing their judgeships for political gain. Really?

Let’s consider first the case on voter identification requirements. In 2018 North Carolina enacted a requirement for citizens to present valid identification in order to vote. This was not done by statute, but rather by amendment to the North Carolina Constitution. Amending the North Carolina Constitution requires that the proposed amendment be passed by 3/5 majorities of both houses of the legislature, and then go to a referendum of the voters. According to the Carolina Journal here, the voter ID amendment obtained the requisite legislative majorities, and then was passed by the voters in 2018 by a majority of 55.49% — perhaps not a landslide, but also not close. The referendum was state-wide, and therefore inherently not possible to gerrymander.

A case challenging the voter ID amendment came before the Democrat-controlled Supreme Court in August 2022. Now, how exactly are these Supreme Court justices going to get around a voter ID provision that by this time is right there in the state Constitution itself? Actually, it’s not hard if you are a results-oriented progressive. At the time that the voter ID amendment passed the legislature, litigation challenging the 2012 redistricting of the state had been working its way through the state courts for years, and a three-judge state court panel had ruled that the existing districting was a partisan gerrymander, although that issue had not reached the state Supreme Court. So here is an excerpt from the majority opinion of the North Carolina Supreme Court (as quoted in the Carolina Journal):

The issue is whether legislators elected from unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts possess unreviewable authority to initiate the process of changing the North Carolina Constitution, including in ways that would allow those same legislators to entrench their own power, insulate themselves from political accountability, or discriminate against the same racial group who were excluded from the democratic process by the unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts. . . . We conclude that article I, sections 2 and 3 of the North Carolina Constitution impose limits on these legislators’ authority to initiate the process of amending the constitution under these circumstances.”

And thus the state Supreme Court purported to disregard a provision of the state Constitution that had only recently been passed by a solid majority of the voters. Consider just how extraordinary this ruling was. If the Court was right that it could ignore the constitutional provision on the ground that the legislature that put it before the voters had been improperly constituted, then theoretically the Court could ignore every other enactment of the legislature as well, and just take over running the state. And weren’t all the other provisions of the North Carolina Constitution also adopted in some manner that could be subjected to criticism in hindsight? I’ll bet almost all of the document was written by white male segregationists — and Democrats no less.

The Court’s decision was written by Justice Anita Earls. Here is a picture of Justice Earls, again from the Carolina Journal. Note the crazed look in her eyes. This is a person who clearly knows the required path to perfect justice and fairness!

Also subject to a request for rehearing by the newly-constituted Supreme Court is a December ruling from the prior Court throwing out the 2022 redistricting maps adopted by the legislature for state legislative races. The Times notes that if that decision gets reconsidered, it will also implicate a prior decision from February 2022 invalidating North Carolina’s congressional maps.

[T]he Republican legislative leaders’ [have requested rehearing of] the December gerrymandering ruling — an order by the Democratic justices to redraw a map of State Senate districts. In that request is a much bigger appeal: for the court to overrule, without any rehearing, a landmark ruling last February that newly drawn congressional and state legislative maps were unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. The ruling led to new maps that probably cost Republicans three or four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the November elections. . .

I have no way of knowing if the redistricting maps put forth by the Republican legislature in early 2022 were in the normal run of partisan gerrymandering, versus some extreme version of the art. But I do note that the Times says that these 2022 decisions “established the precedent that partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina violated the State Constitution.” 

It’s funny that Democrats controlled the state government essentially without interruption from the Civil War until 2011, and somehow that issue never came up. I guess all of their redistricting must have been perfectly fair.  Anyway, I think that the North Carolina voters have been able to decide for themselves who are the ones “politicizing” the state Supreme Court.

 

Tom Fitton: Judicial Watch Settles North Carolina Voter Roll Lawsuit After State Removes Over 430,000 Inactive Names From Rolls

By Cristina Laila February 17, 2022

Another huge win for Judicial Watch.  Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch on Thursday announced it settled its lawsuit against North Carolina after it removed over 430,000 inactive names from voter rolls. Recall, Judicial Watch successfully sued California, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana and forced them to clean up their dirty voter rolls.  Judicial Watch reported:................To Read More....

My Take - What should outrage everyone is the fact these states needed to be forced to do their job.  It's their job to make sure the voter roles are cleansed and maintained. Why haven't they?   They're going after Colorado and Pennsylvania now, but after all this we still come back to the same question.  Why do they have to "force" these states to do what they're supposed to be doing automatically?  Answer?  These state "leaders" are all part of the problem.  The Democrats want dirty roles to steal elections and the Republicans are gutless or leftists in their own right and would have just as soon seen Hillary as President rather than Trump.  Now what about Wisconsin?  

• 1,500 Volunteers Investigate Wisconsin Election: The WEC Is a Member of the ERIC System – They Are Deliberately Not Cleaning the Voter Rolls (VIDEO)
• In Texas, New Law Is Stopping the Steal 
• Pennsylvania Mail-In Voting Law Suffers Another Defeat in Court

Tillis furious North Carolina sanctuary cities let loose nearly 500 illegals

Washington Times Posted On 6:37 am September 11, 2019

Sen. Thom Tillis on Monday blasted sanctuary cities in his home state of North Carolina for turning loose nearly 500 illegal immigrants despite detention requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“These North Carolina counties are releasing illegal immigrants charged with violent crimes like rape and murder without even notifying federal officials, jeopardizing public safety,” Mr. Tillis fumed.

The release of 489 illegal immigrants by law enforcement agencies across North Carolina was detailed in a report by WBTV in Charlotte. The illegals were turned loose during the past 10 months as a result of sanctuary city policies that ignore detainer requests from ICE, according to the report.

Sanctuary cities have existed for years, but their number has soared under President Trump as local public officials and some law enforcement leaders attempt to thwart his get-tough immigration agenda.

Mr. Tillis has emerged as a vocal opponent of sanctuary cities ..........To Read More....

My Take - First of all, this is a violation of federal law.  Secondly, I think it's about time someone went to jail for these actions. 

NC: GOP’s Dan Bishop wins special election over big spending Dem with Trump’s help

GOPUSA Staff September 11, 2019


In a major victory for both President Trump and national Republicans, North Carolina GOP state Sen. Dan Bishop was projected to win a fiercely contested special U.S. House election for the 9th District that was widely seen as a bellwether for the president’s chances in the 2020 election.Even Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairwoman Cheri Bustos acknowledged that the president contributed to Bishop’s win, writing in a statement, “We fell an inch short tonight, but it took more than $6 million in outside Republican spending and a last-minute Trump rally” to seal Democratic candidate Dan McCready’s fate in the 9th District.
This is an excerpt from Fox News...........To Read More.....

President Trump Invited to Deliver SOTU Address in Raleigh by North Carolina Speaker

Michael Patrick Leahy

Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives Tim Moore invited President Trump to deliver the State of the Union address in the chambers of the state's House of Representatives in Raleigh in a letter that was dated January 17 and released to the press Friday afternoon.

On Wednesday, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) asked President Trump to cancel his State of the Union address, scheduled for January 29, in the chambers of the House of Representatives, due to the partial federal government shutdown.

On Thursday, President Trump denied Pelosi access to a military plane for a planned seven day international trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan, also citing the partial federal shutdown.

The Constitution requires that the President deliver a written State of the Union report annually to the Congress. The State of the Union was not delivered in a speech to a joint session of Congress in the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives until 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson was the first to do so.

Every year since then, the president has delivered the State of the Union address in person to a joint session of Congress in the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives, in addition to delivering a written report, as required by the Constitution........To Read More.....

Hypocritical Democrats and the Clinton Campaign Oppose a Recount in North Carolina!

By Joe Scudder

The North Carolina recount is based on a much closer race than in Pennsylvania, but Democrats object. Here’s a typical news story about the North Carolina recount:   This story leaves out Pat McCrory’s case for a recount even though the vote was far closer than in states that Jilll Stein is contesting........So what did Hillary Clinton’s election lawyer say—the same lawyer who has supported recounts in states that Trump won? Marc Elias commented: “Instead of attacking North Carolina voters and undermining our democratic process, Governor McCrory needs to accept his defeat and concede.”

Undermining our democratic process?....To Read More....

My Take - I saw the Green Party Presidential candidate, Jill Stein, being interviewed on Fox News yesterday claiming she would have pursued this challenge even if Hillary would have won because she's soooo concerned about making sure the American Public  can have confidence in the system. 

Horsepucky!

The only states being challenged are states won by Trump.....and won hugely by Trump.  Not one state won by Hillary has been challenged so, including those states the margins of victory were small.  In those states the possibility of overturning - just based on the close margin - has some possibility.  But she and her fellow co-conspirators have done nothing about it.  Worse yet - no matter what happens she can't win!  Why is a person who is incapable of winning allowed to make such challenges?  And if Hillary and her cabal aren't behind this why doesn't she come out and say finally and irrevocably - the election is over....period? 

If anyone out there believes this woman is only concerned about assuring America of the legitimacy of the system - I have a fertile field at the top of Mt. Everest I could sell them cheaply. 

One more thing - I think Trump is right - I believe there were millions of illegal aliens who voted in this election and I think Trump should take up Jill Stein's banner and investigate that, especially in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York,  New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, Virginia, Washington D.C., New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.  Especially those states with a large number of sanctuary cities.  Especially since it's been documented over three million fraudulent votes have been recorded.

 Just to make sure everyone knows election fraud will not be allowed to stand. After all - that's what Jill Stein really wants....Isn't it?

N. Carolina lawmakers scrapping tenure, introducing a voucher program

By Victor Skinner 

North Carolina lawmakers recently passed a new state budget that includes education reforms that would improve teacher quality and expand school choice options for families.  Republican leaders in the state House and Senate recently announced they’ve reached agreement on a $20.6 billion budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year that includes a $23.6 million provision “that scraps the longstanding teacher tenure system in favor of employing educators on contracts that are renewed based on performance reviews,” the Associated Press reports……. It’s the first time in over a century Republicans have gained full control over state government, and it appears they’re using their time to make long-overdue changes in education that Democrats and the state’s teachers organizations strongly oppose.

That means they are putting students and their interests first. That’s the way it should be....To Read More....