Once again, North Carolina has made national news with more political hijinks.

Early last week, when the General Assembly convened for a special session that would ultimately allot $200 million to address the destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew in mid-October, there were rumors that the Republican-dominated House and Senate would sneak into the special session legislation that would add two additional governor-appointed judges to the now-Democratic-majority N.C. Supreme Court. The rumors were denied by lawmakers. And it turned out they weren’t true. Instead, those lawmakers did much more.

Jeff Jackson is a District 37 North Carolina senator. What he described in an op-ed piece Monday on the Charlotte Agenda website doesn’t sound like government; it certainly doesn’t sound like how American government is supposed to work.

“Protesters are chanting. Lobbyists are running around, asking if anyone knows what’s going on. Legislators from the minority party are speculating, caffeinating, reacting. Legislators from the majority party are duck in and out of conference rooms, saying little, and generally avoiding the press. It was a legislative ambush,” Jackson wrote.

Jackson goes on to describe how minutes after the Hurricane Matthew special session was adjourned, a new one was called — one with no clear agenda; a new session in which all bills were to be filed by 7 p.m. At 6 p.m., nothing had been filed, but as the 7 p.m. deadline drew closer, more than two dozen bills came in, some of them making significant changes to election boards, the court process and elections for judges; others vastly limiting the power of the incoming governor, Roy Cooper.

Jackson wrote that he received about 4,000 emails in one day, an amount 100 times the average number of emails he receives. None appeared to be in favor of the sweeping, last-minute changes brought to table without warning, he said.

Monday, North Carolina electors unanimously cast their Electoral College votes for Donald Trump, as decreed by the popular vote of the residents of the state. In this same election, though it was a close one, North Carolina voters also opted not to re-elect Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and instead opted for Democrat Roy Cooper. The people, the voters, made their voices heard in both cases, but here, just before Cooper takes offices, those unhappy with the outcome of the governor’s race are doing everything within their power to hobble his governorship.

It’s dirty politics. Explaining it away as business as usual — after all, the Democratic majority did similar four decades ago — is the equivalent of saying two wrongs do make a right. Shrugging one’s shoulders does not make one disillusioned about the whole process. Rather, it makes one complicit.

Just as the majority of North Carolina voters said Trump was North Carolina’s man, the majority of voters said the same of Cooper. The people spoke, and now the legislators need to listen.