Author: Igor Derysh / Source: Salon
North Carolina Republicans are trying to push through a bill that would give them control over every county’s election board in election years.
State Rep. David Lewis, a Republican who chairs the elections committee, introduced a bill Monday amid an ongoing fraud investigation into the U.S.
House race in North Carolina’s 9th district.The bill would require every county’s election board to be chaired by a member of the party with the highest number of registered voters in odd-numbered years, and by a member of the party with the second-highest number of registered voters in even-numbered years.
Since North Carolina has more registered Democrats than Republicans — and since elections occur in even-numbered years — Republicans would be in charge of every election board in every election year.
The move comes two years after the state’s Republicans voted to limit the power of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Among the moves the party made that year was create a bipartisan elections board to limit Cooper’s role in overseeing elections.
That board struck down by a court, and in a strange twist, its last move was to stop the certification of the results in North Carolina’s 9th district, where Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by just over 900 votes.
The nine-member board voted unanimously not to certify results in the race, citing absentee ballot irregularities. It was later reported that had Harris received 61 percent of the vote in Bladen County, the only county in the district where he received more absentee-by-mail votes than McCready.
“In Bladen County, 61% of the accepted absentee-by-mail ballots went Republican –…
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