NC elections board switches to GOP control after court ruling. Here's who's in charge now

Elections administration in North Carolina is now run by someone other than the governor, for the first time in 125 years, following a court ruling Wednesday in favor of Republicans.

The change switches the State Board of Elections, as well as all 100 county election boards, from having a 3-2 Democratic majority to now having a 3-2 Republican majority.

Republicans say it will help restore faith in election integrity following what they view as missteps by the elections board under Democratic control in recent years.

"North Carolinians deserve to have a Board of Elections that works for them," Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger said.

Democrats say it's an unconstitutional power grab that rejects the will of the voters and is meant solely to help Republicans concentrate their power in the state.

They also view it as part of a bigger strategy involving the GOP's attempts to overturn the results of a still-uncalled election for the state Supreme Court last year, between Democrat Allison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin. The elections board, which has been at the center of that lawsuit, has fought against Griffin's attempts to throw out thousands of ballots. The new GOP-controlled elections board, however, could reverse course and start siding with Griffin.

The legislature voted after last year's elections to take control over the elections board away from incoming Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and instead hand the power to a new Republican state official, Auditor Dave Boliek. Until Wednesday's ruling, that law had been blocked as unconstitutional.

Stein said Wednesday there was no reason for the Court of Appeals to issue its decision the way it did — on a faster-than-normal schedule with no oral arguments and no details on why the judges made their ruling, or even the identities of the judges involved — other than pure partisan politics related to the Griffin-Riggs case.

"I fear that this decision is the latest step in the partisan effort to steal a seat on the Supreme Court," Stein wrote Wednesday. "No emergency exists that can justify the Court of Appeals’ decision to interject itself at this point. The only plausible explanation is to permit [Boliek] to appoint a new State Board of Elections that will try to overturn the results of the Supreme Court race."

While the appeals court kept the identities of the judges who issued the ruling a secret, a spokesman for Griffin — who still serves on the Court of Appeals while his election lawsuit plays out — told WRAL Thursday that Griffin was not among the judges who issued Wednesday's ruling changing the composition of the elections board. The appeals court has 15 judges and typically assigns cases to three-judge panels.

Anonymous court ruling

Republican state lawmakers have been trying for the past decade to take away the governor's power over elections, with a variety of different plans, all of which have been rejected by voters at the ballot box or ruled unconstitutional in court. Last week, this newest change was also ruled unconstitutional, following a trial in Wake County Superior Court.

But on Wednesday, in a two-sentence-long ruling that came without oral arguments and included no explanation for their decision, an anonymous group of North Carolina Court of Appeals judges overturned the trial court's ruling and allowed elections to transfer to Boliek's control, effective Thursday.

While the judges who issued that ruling kept their names secret, Republicans hold a large majority on the state Court of Appeals.

Stein immediately appealed that ruling to the North Carolina Supreme Court, asking the court to step in Wednesday night and pause the Court of Appeals ruling from going into effect Thursday while his appeal plays out.

But the Supreme Court, which also has a Republican majority, didn't rule. In the meantime, Boliek on Thursday began naming members of the new, Republican-controlled elections board.

Who's on the board

Boliek is supposed to eventually appoint three Republicans and two Democrats to be in charge of voting on election rules, investigations and other election-related matters.

He appointed the following three Republican members, chosen from nominees submitted by the NCGOP: Conservative activist Francis Deluca, former high-ranking state senator Bob Rucho, and one of the two Republicans on the previous version of the elections board, Stacy Eggers IV.

"These board members will ensure North Carolinians have fair, free, honest, and transparent administration of elections," NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons said Thursday.

The North Carolina Democratic Party nominated four people to be considered for their two seats, all of whom have previously served on the elections board at some point. Boliek picked two of them who currently serve on the elections board, Jeff Carmon and Siobhan Millen.

North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton harshly criticized the changes in her letter to Boliek, nominating the party's picks.

"Republicans' passage of an unconstitutional bill wrenching that power from the governor’s office and giving it to you is an abuse of power and a disservice to the people of North Carolina," Clayton wrote to Boliek. "You were not elected to do this duty."

Shift in political power

Republican lawmakers have been trying to take elections power away from the governor's office ever since Democrat Roy Cooper unseated former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, in 2016.

But the legislature's efforts targeting the governor's power over elections were all either ruled unconstitutional in courts or rejected at the ballot box by voters, at least until Wednesday. It's unclear why the judges overturned that previous precedent, since they didn't explain their decision in the ruling.

The changes taking power over elections away from the governor, and giving that power instead to the state auditor, were made in a lame-duck legisltative session in December 2024 just weeks after Stein and Boliek each won election.

Cooper vetoed the bill, but Republicans were able to pass it into law over his veto by holding that vote before new state legislators, who had won election in 2024, were sworn in. Democrats flipped several GOP-held seats in 2024, breaking Republicans' veto-proof supermajority, but Republicans still had a supermajority when they took that vote.

In addition to targeting Stein's ability to name members of the elections board, that law also made several other changes critics viewed as politically motivated power grabs, some of which are the subject of separate lawsuits:

• Allowing the legislature to block Stein's decisions on hiring or firing the leader of the State Highway Patrol.
• Banning Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson from being allowed to argue in court that anything the legislature does is unconstitutional.
• Eliminating a school safety committee led by the Department of Public Instruction, which in the 2024 elections switched from Republican to Democratic control under new superintendent of schools Mo Green.
• Eliminating a committee on energy policy led by the lieutenant governor, which in the 2024 elections switched from Republican to Democratic control under new Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt, and giving those decisions to the state Utilities Commission.
• Taking away the governor's ability to appoint a majority of members to the state Utilities Commission, and giving Republicans a majority instead.
• Blocking the attorney general from being automatically allowed to file with the Utilities Commission challenging requests by Duke Energy or any other utility company to raise people's rates.