by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
May 5, 2025

RALEIGH — Dave Boliek made history last week as the first North Carolina auditor to appoint members of an election board. He used his newfound power, granted by the N.C. Court of Appeals a day before, to transform the State Board of Elections into a more Republican body. The implications of those actions are still to come, but hold the potential to have far-reaching consequences not only for state politics, but in the lives of everyday North Carolinians. 

It’s a long-fought victory for North Carolina Republican legislators, who have tried to shift election appointment power away from Democratic governors since 2016. Their most recent attempt gave that power to the state auditor after a Republican —Boliek — won the office for the first time in 16 years. It’s a Council of State job that normally goes unnoticed by most and the names of those who’ve held the position are typically unknown to the general public.

Now, that’s likely to change.

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Even though Democratic Gov. Josh Stein quickly issued an appeal to the N.C. Supreme Court, it is unlikely to succeed with Republicans holding a 5-2 majority.

In contrast, newly-appointed State Board members clocked in for their first days of work last week. Three previous board members were reappointed: Democrats Siobhan Millen and Jeff Carmon as well as Republican Stacy Eggers. 

Former Democratic chairman Alan Hirsch and Republican Kevin Lewis are out. 

Replacing them are Republicans Bob Rucho and Francis De Luca. 

Rucho is a former state senator who oversaw a redistricting process that ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

De Luca is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who helmed the Civitas Institute, a conservative advocacy and policy-making group, for 17 years. He ran unsuccessfully for a North Carolina congressional seat in 2019. 

Later this month, the new state board will choose its executive director — who will most certainly be a Republican.

The result should be a more conservative state elections board, which will in turn create county boards across North Carolina in that same mold. 

Should things remain unchanged, Republicans will have the final say on key election issues that emerge in the years to come. 

A foregone conclusion for Boliek?

Last month, the Wake County Superior Court ruled that taking election appointment power from the governor would violate the state constitution by hindering that person’s ability to ensure the law is faithfully executed. 

The court ruled in a 2-1 decision that the governor, and the governor only, is responsible for that executive power. 

While the N.C. Court of Appeals did not include an explanation in its reversal of the Wake County court’s ruling, its panel of judges obviously disagreed. 

Lawyers representing Republican legislative leaders and Boliek have argued that since the auditor is also a member of the executive branch, they can share in that duty if the General Assembly wishes. The legislature gets to assign duties to Council of State members, and elections appointment power is up for grabs, they testified.

Lawmakers haven’t explained why the auditor is better suited to the job than the secretary of state, who oversees elections in many states. In fact, a previous attempt to shift power from the governor did hand it over to the secretary of state. 

But legislators shifted their approach after a Democrat won that office in the last election. 

Last Wednesday’s order effectively allowed the challenged law to go into effect before May 1 — the date the law sets for the auditor, Boliek, to appoint new election board members.

That’s two years before their terms were originally scheduled to expire. 

Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, saw the change coming. 

“There is nothing sacrosanct about the governor being the one to appoint the board,” he said. “I know it’s happened for a long time, but for at least as long a time before that, the governor had nothing to do with the process.” 

Katelin Kaiser, the policy director for Democracy North Carolina, was disappointed in the lack of explanation regarding the unsigned order. And she’s certainly not holding out hope that the N.C. Supreme Court reverses the appellate court’s order. 

“This version of the court has shown us time and time again that it is not following the law for the people,” she said, “but for the political party and other special interests in North Carolina.” 

The state Supreme Court could have stepped in immediately to stop the law from going into effect while it considered the case.  That didn’t happen, and the silence seems to signal approval for Boliek, Kaiser said. 

Furthermore, the fact that the appellate court allowed the law to go into effect in the first place may be a sign of its confidence that the state Supreme Court will back up their decision, Jackson said. 

“If they didn’t have that confidence, maybe they would go ahead and let this get through the process, rather than issuing a stay right before that deadline,” he said. 

It’s unclear, though, whether the newly-appointed board members would lose their positions if the state Supreme Court did rule in the governor’s favor. 

What does a Republican elections board mean? 

For the most part, North Carolina’s election boards unanimously agree on many issues. But there are some decisions where which party holds the deciding vote matters. 

One is Sunday voting. Boards, particularly rural ones, have quibbled over whether early-voting days should include Sundays for years. 

Democrats tend to approve of Sunday voting, partly because they see it as a way to boost Black voter turnout after church. Some Republicans, including current Republican State Board member Kevin Lewis, would prefer to not hold voting on Sundays. 

“I would assume that (early voting) is going to be more repressive to voters, and take back the expansiveness of that opportunity for voters to use same-day registration and to have their ballot cast before Election Day,” Kaiser said. 

In the coming months and years, election boards will determine where North Carolina stands in the balance between voter access and election security, what they spend money on and how cooperative they’ll be with the Trump administration’s election agenda.

But perhaps most timely is the ongoing contested state Supreme Court race between Democratic Justice Allison Riggs and Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin. 

Griffin has challenged certain categories of voters with the goal of removing them from the count in his race and bridge the 734-vote gap currently between him and Riggs. The case is now in federal court.

The State Board of Elections could come into play. While the board likely can’t take back the lawsuit now, they can edit their planned “cure process” for impacted voters. Specifically, Kaiser could see the new board removing the opportunity for so-called “Never Residents” to prove that they actually have resided in North Carolina before being removed from the count. 

Or, they could change their tune on which voters in particular they’re considering a part of Griffin’s protest, which has become a key issue in recent weeks. 

“I don’t want to cast a dark cloud over the State Board, but I am concerned,” Kaiser said.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Boliek flexes new power, gives GOP control over elections board appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

The content presents a clear political leaning toward the Republican Party, as it details the actions of a Republican auditor, Dave Boliek, and the broader shift of election appointment power away from the Democratic governor in North Carolina. The article discusses the Republican legislative efforts to gain control of the election board and describes the newly appointed members of the board, most of whom are Republicans. While the piece highlights concerns from Democratic figures like Katelin Kaiser, the framing and focus on the Republican perspective, along with the mention of their long-standing attempts to shift election control, suggest a Center-Right bias in its coverage of the issue.