RALEIGH – Agriculture Commissioner Britt Cobb, attorneys for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, and Democratic partisans defending them have been standing in a pretty deep hole for weeks. Their absurd proposal is that millions of North Carolinians trudge back to the polls, contrary to state law and common sense, just to give Cobb another chance to defeat Republican Steve Troxler after losing on Nov. 2.
And now, shovels in hand and oddly eager to embarrass themselves further, they are in the process of digger the hole deeper.
There are three key requirements in state law that must be satisfied before the State Board of Elections can order a statewide revote to remedy an electoral injustice. First, there must in fact be clear evidence that citizens’ right to vote has been injured. Second, the number of injured voters must be large enough that the injuries might actually have changed the result of the initial election. Third, four of the five members of the state board must support a statewide revote or it cannot be ordered.
So what Cobb, some state officials, and their partisans are demanding – a statewide revote – is already patently illegal. Only three of the five members of the state board, the three Democratic appointees, support that remedy. The two Republicans oppose it. The Democratic majority suggests that its 3-2 vote was to amend a previous remedy, a new election limited to Carteret County, which did receive a 4-1 vote. But that election has been struck down by the courts. More importantly, if a simple majority can “amend” a previous board election to evade a super-majority requirement, the super-majority requirement is null and void. No sensible judge, enforcing the letter and intent of the law, will allow such a weak argument to stand.
Still, assume for the sake of argument that Cobb gets his case before only senseless judges and they buy it. That’s where Troxler’s efforts over the weekend come into play. His supporters went to Carteret, read down the list of voters whose ballots were not counted, contacted them, and came up with a list of 1,352 voters willing to swear in affidavits that they had voted for Troxler before and would do so again.
The math is important: if you add those voters to the margin Troxler racked up in the rest of the state, you have an insurmountable lead – even if Cobb got every one of the remaining untallied votes in Carteret, itself highly unlikely.
So what are the responses of Cobb and state attorneys to this turn of events? That the state board has already ruled (no, it really hasn’t, not legally), that Troxler is being a “vigilante” (no, it’s the other side trying to operate outside the law), and that it’s too late to accept the affidavits as evidence (no, it’s just too late to believe anything these desperate hacks have to say).
We can barely see the top of Cobb’s head at this point. If he ever wants to get out of the hole, to leave office with a shred of credibility and honor, it’s time to put down his pick and climb out. Let the rest of them in there keep shoveling their dirt – or perhaps something smellier.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.