County elections boards to add a new member as a result of a new law

 

Beaufort County’s Board of Elections would gain a member under legislation ratified Friday by the North Carolina Senate during its fourth special session this legislative session.

After making it through committees Thursday, it headed to the full state Senate, where it passed and was sent to the state House for consideration. On Friday, the House voted 63-27 (along party lines) to pass the legislation, known as Senate Bill 4. The Senate concurred with changes made by the House. Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill into law later Friday.

State Sen. Bill Cook, a Beaufort County Republican who represents District 1, and state Rep. Michael Speciale, a Republican who represents District 3 in the state House, voted for the legislation.

“In reference to your question on the State Ethics and Elections Enforcement Board, it follows the model of the Federal Elections Commission and the current model of the State Ethics Commission by requiring the board’s eight members to be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, and by requiring at least six votes for an official action. This structure should address the recent criticism from Roy Cooper and those on the left that these boards have the ability to act out of partisan motivation. It will require board members to work together and help take partisanship out of a highly political process,” Cook wrote in an email to the Daily News.

Democrats said the changes, written by Republicans, would rob the incoming Democratic administration of Gov.-elect Roy Cooper control of the state and county boards of elections.

“I think, to be candid with you, that you will see the General Assembly look to reassert its constitutional authority in areas that may have been previously delegated to the executive branch,” David Lewis, chairman of the House Rules Committee, said Thursday morning, adding that legislators will “work to establish that we are going to continue to be a relevant party in governing this state.” Lewis did not address why the General Assembly did not try to reassert its constitutional authority in certain areas delegated to the executive branch during Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration.

That session, which convened Wednesday and adjourned Friday, was deemed unconstitutional by Democrats, saying Republicans failed to follow proper procedure in calling the session. Democrats also said the special session and some of the legislation it spawned is nothing more than Republican trying to take away authority from Cooper. Republicans contended they were doing nothing more than making the current system more efficient and bipartisan.

Under the new law, the North Carolina State Board of Elections and the State Ethics Commission would be combined into the North Carolina Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. The quasi-judicial agency would have the power to issue subpoenas and make witnesses testify. The agency would be managed by an executive director, but overseen by an eight-member board evenly split among party lines. The board would appoint the executive director.

The governor would appoint four of the eight members, choosing from nominees from the two largest political parties in the state. The state House would choose two members, as would the state Senate. The legislation states that a majority vote for action by the state board requires six members, except where state law requires a unanimous vote.

The legislation would change the composition of county boards of elections by increasing them from three-member bodies to four-member bodies with an equal partisan split. Currently, those boards are composed of two members from the party of the sitting governor and one member of the opposing party. For now, that means each county board of elections has two Republicans and one Democrat.

Kellie Harris Hopkins, elections director for Beaufort County, believes transitioning to a four-member board poses few, if any, problems related to simply increasing the size of the board. The new law could have some unintended consequences, she said.

“I have faith in both parties in Beaufort County. I feel like if they go to a four-member board, we’ve always operated as a bipartisan board. We’ve never been one that I thought that would cause a problem for. I think, really, logistically, I’m not really worried about having four members,” said Kellie Harris Hopkins, elections director for Beaufort County, on Friday.

Hopkins, who’s been the director for 18 years, believes most Beaufort County voters likely will not pay attention to the changes. “I’m not sure how the public would feel about an added member to the Board of Elections,” she said. Hopkins said most county voters probably do not know who serves on the three-member board. “I’ll admit when I first applied for the job, I didn’t know who was on the board either. Of course, I was young and straight out of college,” she said.

Hopkins said she’s not certain what would happen if a four-member board’s vote on something ended with a 2-2 tie. Asked if the North Carolina State Board of Elections would step in and decided the issue, she said, “I’m not really sure. There’s going to be a lot of questions like that over the next six months or however long it is before they take office. This bill, it seems simple in the fact that it changes to a four-member board, but there’s so many instances that this will effect — for instance, the one-stop plans that have to be unanimous. There are many different aspects of the job that that could have an effect on, and we just won’t see until we work through it. … We would be realizing the effects of it for years because we simply have not had it that way.”

There is one known effect, according to Hopkins.

“It would, of course, add to our budget because we’d have one more person on payroll and for education expenses also because, by General Statutes, there would be training sessions that they would have to attend. So, our budget would be affected by that. That’s an immediate effect,” Hopkins said.

The new law also restores partisan elections in judicial races and changes the regulation of lobbyists and ethics complaints.

As Republican state Sen. Tommy Tucker, during the Senate session Thursday afternoon, explained the legislation as an attempt to remove politics from government, several people in the gallery erupted in laughter. Later, after some people in the gallery reacted to Republican comments on the Senate floor, the gallery was cleared at the order of Lt. Gov. Dan Forrest, a Republican and president of the state Senate. As some of the gallery members were escorted from the Senate chamber, they chanted, “You work for us” and “Morally corrupt.”

Similar chants were made during the clearing of the House gallery Friday.