Overriding Gov. Cooper’s vetoes, the NC legislature makes it harder to vote, easier to pollute.

The state legislature voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes of bills on elections, political appointments, and environmental protections on Tuesday, enacting laws that tighten voting rules, change election administration, and loosen pollution regulations. 

Two of the new laws are already being challenged in court. 

The Democratic National Committee and the state Democratic Party are suing in federal court over the new elections law, saying it make it harder for some people to register to vote or have their votes count. The law would also permit an “influx of intimidating and largely unconstrained poll observers into voting places,” the lawsuit says.

Minutes after the legislature canceled Cooper’s veto of the voting bill, voter groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging one of the same law’s  provisions as unconstitutional.  

Later, Cooper filed a suit in state court challenging the law reducing a governor’s appointments to state boards and commissions. The law violates the principles of separation of powers, the lawsuit says.

The new elections laws represent changes that Republicans have pushed over the last few years, with some added wrinkles. 

Republicans have veto-proof majorities in both chambers and the House and Senate voted to override Cooper’s vetoes of the elections bills along party lines.  

Ways to throw out more ballots

Starting with next year’s elections, mail-in absentee ballots must arrive at the board of election by 7:30 election night. The new law eliminates the three-day grace period for absentee ballot returns.  

Partisan election observers will have more freedom to move around polling places and will be allowed to listen to conversations between voters and poll workers. 

More people will be able to challenge ballots. The law widens the pool of potential ballot challengers from residents of a voter’s precinct to residents of a voter’s county.  

Rep. Grey Mills, a Iredell County Republican and a chairman of the House Election Law and Campaign Finance Reform Committee, said the new law will improve early voting.  

House Democrats said the law will lead to increased voter intimidation and fewer absentee ballots counted.  

Allowing partisan observers to “linger around voters and listen to conversations translates as intimidation and harassment,” said Rep. Renee Price, an Orange Count Democrat.  

“One could easily deduce the purpose of the bill is to deny certain people access to the ballot box,” she said.  

Rep. Abe Jones, a Wake County Democrat and a former Superior Court judge, said the law was “malarky.”  

None of the changes make voting easier, he said, but will punish people who make mistakes.

“That’s shameful,” he said. “I don’t know who wrote this stuff up, sat down in a room and thought it up. There was no problem with voting in North Carolina. One guy ran for President, spread that vicious lie around the country that something happened and that’s why he didn’t win. Everybody knows who I’m talking about. That was a lie. And so then people sat down and concocted this stuff. And that’s preposterous.”

Vote Latino, the Watauga Voting Rights Task Force, Down Home North Carolina, and two voters filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a section of the law that will have votes of same-day registrants thrown out if a postcard mailed to them is returned as undeliverable before the final certification of election results. 

Housing insecurity, using a college campus address, or living in a multi-generational household make ballots of Black, Latinx, and young voters more likely than white, non-Latinx, and older voters more likely to be thrown out, the lawsuit says. 

Attorneys associated with the Elias Law Group, who have represented Democratic voters in redistricting and elections lawsuits over the years, are representing the citizen groups. 

The House and Senate overrode Cooper’s veto along party lines with votes of 30-19 in the Senate and 72-44 in the House. 

New state and local boards of election

Election administration statewide will see a major shift early next year, months before the 2024 elections. 

The legislature canceled Cooper’s veto to enact a new law that will change who runs elections statewide and in all 100 counties. 

The five-member state board where the governor’s party holds three seats will be gone. The governor will no longer appoint members to the state board based on recommendations from the major parties. 

Instead, legislators will appoint eight members. Party leaders in each chamber will each appoint two members. Each local board will have four members, with party leaders in each legislative chamber appointing one member. 

Republicans maintain that the evenly-split boards will foster bipartisan cooperation, while Democrats said they are a recipe for gridlock that could result in severely diminished early voting access with Republicans making key elections appointments. 

If the new state board cannot agree on a chairman or an executive director, Republican legislative leaders would make the selections. 

If local boards and the state board cannot agree on county early voting plans, counties will have a single early voting site, the minimum allowed by law. 

Sen. Paul Newton, a Cabarrus County Republican and chairman of the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee, said the change will give each party an equal say. 

“The current board structure allows the party of the governor to manipulate the system,” he said. 

Republicans have tried twice before to make similar changes. 

The law mirrors a proposed change to the state constitution that Republicans put on the ballot in 2018 and that voters soundly defeated, NC Newsline has reported. More than 61% voted no. 

The state Supreme Court in February 2018 rejected a law the Republican-led legislature passed before Cooper took office that changed membership on the state elections board. 

Sen. Natalie Murdock, a Durham Democrat, said the law violated separation of powers principles and will make it harder for people to vote. 

“Why would we move forward with this bill that could potentially take away voting opportunities?”  Murdock asked. “This was never about strengthening our elections. It’s about a power grab.”

Another law Democrats denounced as a power grab will give legislators more appointments to  state boards and commissions. 

Notably, Republican legislative leaders will appoint 14 of the 20 state Board of Transportation members. The governor had made all 20 appointments, but will be left with six. 

The law also takes away two of nine governor appointees to the 15-member Environmental Management Commission and gives them to the state agriculture commissioner. 

House Democratic leader Robert Reives of Chatham County said Republican legislators are on a mission to take power away from every other branch of government.

Republicans draw safe election districts for themselves, so they don’t have to listen to those who disagree with them. 

“How does a democracy work when there’s somebody who controls $30 billion, all of the boards, all of the commissions, the elections, and doesn’t have to answer to anybody outside of the constituents they have drawn to vote for them?” Reives said. “This is not what government is meant to be. This is not what democracy looks like.”

Both the House and Senate voted along party lines to override Cooper’s veto of the appointments bill.

Cooper is suing over this law.

“Over the years, the North Carolina Supreme Court has repeatedly held in bipartisan decisions that the legislature cannot seize executive power like this no matter what political parties control which offices,” Cooper said in a statement. “The efforts of Republican legislators to destroy the checks and balances in our constitution are bad for people and bad for our democracy.”

Weakened environmental protections

One of the new laws is a grab-bag of changes that weaken environmental protections. One of its provisions will prohibit the state Department of Environmental Quality from denying a hog waste pit or swine gas project on civil rights grounds, NC Newsline has reported.

Rep. Deb Butler, a New Hanover Democrat, said the law’s weakened stormwater regulations will harm the natural environment. 

“It feels like we’re back to just everybody for themselves, all the time and in every circumstance,” she said. “We don’t even want to encourage best efforts.”

Five House Democrats – Reps. Carla Cunningham and Nasif Majeed of Mecklenburg, Garland Pierce of Scotland County, Shelly Willingham of Rocky Mount, and Michael Wray of Northampton County, joined all Republicans to override Cooper’s veto of House bill 600. 

Finally, the legislature canceled Cooper’s veto of a bill that redefined “clean energy” to include nuclear power plants. 

When he vetoed the bill, Cooper said it was an attempt to “put construction of traditional power plants, and higher profits for the utility companies, over low-cost solutions like energy efficiency.”

The same five Democrats who joined Republicans to override the veto on environmental regulations also voted to override Cooper’s veto of the energy bill. 

NC Newsline producer Clayton Henkel contributed to this report.