North Carolina Republican lawmakers are pushing for a new law that would allow the GOP to force out more than two dozen nonpartisan staff at the State Board of Elections and replace them with political appointees.
The new bill, made public Thursday, would also open the door for political spending by foreign people and corporations in North Carolina elections, but only for referendum items — which could include votes on new constitutional amendments, or bonds to take on large amounts of debt for construction projects.
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The bill would also ban state and local elections officials from encouraging people to vote, ban ranked-choice voting, and kickstart the process for using signature-matching software in future elections that would use artificial intelligence to potentially throw out people's ballots.
Republicans framed the bill as an effort to improve the public's faith in elections. It passed through committee despite strenuous objections from Democratic lawmakers, and after the committee's GOP leaders blocked members of the public from being allowed to comment on the proposed changes — a sharp divergence from typical legislative practice.
In an interview Thursday, Republican state House Speaker Destin Hall suggested it could come up for debate again as it undergoes revisions. He said he expects some changes to the bill going forward but didn't provide details. "That bill is one that is certainly not ready for a floor vote yet," he said.
The only comments allowed Thursday from non-legislators came from Sam Hayes, the new state elections director, who took over following a recent court ruling that has at least temporarily allowed the State Board of Elections to switch from Democratic to Republican control. He said Thursday that even though the bill would allow him to replace about one-third of the state's entire elections workforce with people who could have no qualifications other than partisan loyalty, that's not his intent.
Hayes said he wants to reorganize essentially the entire elections board, but he can't easily do that without getting rid of the protections its staff currently enjoy against politically motivated hirings and firings.
"I need to conduct that reorg and make sure that the folks that are surrounding me — certainly my direct reports and I — are aligned on the vision for the agency as I set forward," Hayes said. "But I want to assure everyone here today that we are going to do this in a nonpartisan fashion."
Some Democrats, however, questioned how a longtime GOP insider such as Hayes could possibly be nonpartisan in that effort. Hayes ran for attorney general in 2020 but came in second in the GOP primary, and has also previously served as general counsel for the speaker of the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives and for Republican state Treasurer Dale Folwell.
"I'm just so sad," said Rep. Allison Dahle, D-Wake. "Elections are so important to me. I don't care who wins, I want them to win justly. And I am really nervous.”
State and county election boards have broad authority over election administration in the state. They can choose the locations and hours for early voting sites, come up with rules for mail-in voting, pick voting machines, audit election results, investigate claims of fraud or campaign finance violations, and decide whether or not to certify the results of elections.
Critics of the sweeping new changes rolled out Thursday say there's a very good reason to shield the agency's rank-and-file staff from political rewards or retributions, given those sensitive decisions they help guide.
"This takes existing civil servants — many of whom have worked at this agency for years, under Republican administrations, under Democratic ones — and allows them to be redesignated and fired for political reasons and then replaced for political reasons," Rep. Phil Rubin, D-Wake, said. "That is a purge of the agency."
Power struggle over elections
Republican state lawmakers have been trying to wrest control of the elections board from the governor for a decade, and they're now moving to enact sweeping changes now that they appear to have finally succeeded.
Those efforts were routinely ruled unconstitutional, until this spring when a GOP-majority panel of N.C. Court of Appeals judges allowed new changes to go forward stripping Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of his power over the elections board and giving it to Republican state Auditor Dave Boliek instead.
While Thursday's bill included a number of provisions Hayes asked for — as well as others he told reporters he had no idea about and which must've come directly from Republican lawmakers — the most attention was reserved for the changes that would make 25 of the board's 68 employees at-will, removing all the normal protections from political interference that most state employees have.
Historically, the elections board has been led by five members, with the governor's political party given a 3-2 majority. That board can hire and fire the executive director, but no one else. All other jobs are meant for career state employees, not political appointees.
When Republican Gov. Pat McCrory took office in 2013, he replaced former Democratic Elections Dirctor Gary Bartlett with Kim Strach. Strach carried on with Bartlett's staff. Then in 2017 Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper took office and allowed Strach to remain in office for a few years before eventually replacing her with his new pick of Karen Brinson Bell. She likewise carried on with Strach's staff.
Under the existing system, Hayes would now carry on with Brinson Bell's staff. But Hayes and his allies in the legislature say that system is no longer acceptable to them.
"The agency head has to have trusted advisors around him," Hayes said in an interview after the committee Thursday.
Similarly, the bill would also allow the elections board to more easily hire private attorneys for any lawsuits it might face in the future, instead of using the state-provided lawyers from Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson's office.
That provision would set up politically connected conservative law firms to charge taxpayers potentially millions in fees, if Hayes or the election board's Republican majority don't want Jackson and other Democrats learning about their internal deliberations and strategies regarding controversial changes to election rules.
Hayes has already started some personnel changes. He created a chief of staff position, which hasn't previously existed at the elections board, and hired former Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's chief of staff Brian LiVecchi. LiVecchi was one of the Robinson aides who publicly resigned following a CNN report that alleged Robinson had made racist statements in the comments section of a pornographic website. Robinson denied the allegations.
LiVecchi said in an interview Thursday that if the bill becomes law and Hayes does start firing the board's top lawyers, election experts or other staffers, people shouldn't assume it's all about politics.
"For example, it's as simple as remote work," LiVecchi said. "The previous executive director was a big remote work person. [Hayes] is not a big remote work person. It's managerial flexibility and things like that, to have staff around him that align with how the agency operates. Not necessarily red versus blue."
But some critics said if the changes were all common-sense provisions, the legislature wouldn't have rushed to pass the bill through committee with hardly any time for the public to read the bill before the vote, and no ability to comment on its numerous changes to many facets of election law beyond the personnel provisions.
"It's a glaring question of why this bill needed to be rushed through today, without discussion of really critical provisions," Ann Webb, policy director at Common Cause North Carolina, said in an interview.