The state’s top elections staffer says she sees no problems ahead for North Carolina municipal elections — unless there’s an election protest. There’s also no way to certify the results of this year’s elections under current conditions.
Kim Westbrook Strach, executive director of the recently merged N.C. State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, delivered that warning this morning to a legislative committee.
“I’m hoping we’re not going to have … What we will have a problem … is if we have any election protests,” Strach said, when asked if she “anticipated any concerns” about the municipal elections taking place across the state this month and in November. “Clearly, the staff cannot deal with those. We’re hoping that if things go smoothly … We also can’t … the staff can’t certify elections. That’s a board function.”
The problem for Strach and the roughly 90 people on her staff is that they have no oversight board. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the Republican-led General Assembly are waging a legal battle over the future of the State Board of Elections.
A state law enacted earlier this year over Cooper’s veto merged state elections and ethics boards into one new eight-member group with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. That group replaces the old five-member State Board of Elections, which guaranteed the governor’s party a majority of members.
Cooper has refused to appoint members to the new eight-member board while his legal team continues to challenge the state law.
Elections staff have continued to conduct business during the legal fight. Since June 1, the combined elections and ethics agencies have been working on their merger and conducting normal business, Strach said.
“We do all the work on that to ensure that the results are accurate, but when it comes down to whether or not we have protests, that’s something that we would need a board to do,” Strach said. “There are, I think, things that can go to the courts if a board is not in place. … We just hope that we don’t get there.”
Strach reminded the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on General Government that much of the work for municipal elections depends on county elections workers across the state. Those workers have faced a preview of working with a bipartisan election board, she said.
Under the old state law, county elections boards had three members. Two represented the governor’s political party. The new law requires four-member boards with two members of each major party. No new members have been appointed to county elections boards this year as the state legal battle continues.
“One of the positive things is that even though we don’t have new county [elections] boards, if they have three members, in order to make a decision they all have to be unanimous,” she said. “So this new concept of the new board when it comes in place of having eight members — four Democrats, four Republicans — right now, the counties are getting a little head start on that.”
There’s no timetable for the courts to resolve the dispute over the future of a combined state elections and ethics board.