BOTH Parties Submit Ineligible Candidates for New State Board of Elections as 9th District Investigation Hangs in Balance

RALEIGH – Thursday, January 31, 2019 was supposed to be the day the new State Board of Elections convened weeks after the last one was dissolved by court order. To be sure, there is some important business for the Board to resolve, with the investigation into the 9th Congressional fraud allegations awaiting conclusion and, thus, no congressional representative seated in the U.S. House.

The Republican and Democratic state parties had the opportunity to submit nominees for Gov. Roy Cooper to appoint to staff the Board. There are rules that the nominees must satisfy, one of which being that a nominee cannot have been involved in electioneering within the past four years.

Despite being aware of these requirements, BOTH state parties submitted nominees that are disqualified for recent electioneering.

From the Charlotte Observer:

“Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s office on Tuesday found two of the four Democrats nominated to the board ineligible. A new board is scheduled to be appointed by Thursday.[…]

William McKinney, Cooper’s legal counsel, on Tuesday notified the state Democratic Party that Valerie Johnson and Greg Flynn are ineligible for the board because they’d engaged in “electioneering” activities in the last four years. Both had been nominated to the new board by the party.

Democrats will fill three seats on the new board; Republicans will have two. On Wednesday, Democrats nominated two replacements.[…]”

Last week two of the Republican nominees were labeled ineligible for the same reason. Democrats wasted no time in chiding Republicans for their sloppy mistake, but perhaps should have been worrying about themselves a little more carefully.

Both parties have named alternative nominees. Hopefully the formation of a new board is not further delayed because of the avoidable oversights – there are about three quarters of a million 9th District voters that would like some representation in congress.