Here's who will preside over elections amid NC governor and GOP lawmakers' power struggle

Many voters in North Carolina fill in ballots on Election Day, slide them into voting machines, maybe pick up an “I voted” sticker on the way out of the polling place, watch for the results and think it’s all over.

But the 2016 elections in North Carolina showed how much can happen after the last ballot is cast.

There was a post-election campaign after Democrat Roy Cooper defeated Republican Pat McCrory in a narrow 10,277-vote victory, with voter challenges and recount petitions filed across the state.

It wasn't until a month later that McCrory acknowledged he lost.

The monthlong election aftermath from two years ago provides insight into one of the power struggles going on between the Republican-led General Assembly and Cooper. The state elections and ethics board has been in limbo for much of the past year as Cooper has turned to the courts to overturn attempts by lawmakers to have greater sway in who's appointed to it.

This week, even as the latest changes took effect and the governor sued to block them, Cooper also decided who will preside over elections and ethics questions at the start of the 2018 elections by naming members to the long-dormant board.

In 2016, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on legal fees for the series of challenges questioning the outcome of the election, amid claims that some North Carolina voters also were registered in other states and voted twice and that other voters were felons whose right to vote had not been restored.

It was all done outside the courts.

Cooper ended Election Night with a lead of fewer than 5,000 votes over McCrory and quickly declared victory. But the McCrory campaign and state Republican Party did not concede for another month. They insisted that every vote needed to be counted, and challenged the validity of absentee votes, provisional ballots and others that they said should be thrown out.

Rise in prominence

Cooper's lead grew as those issues were resolved, but the challenges kept county election boards working overtime and highlighted how election boards at the county and state level could be drawn into political battles that don't end at the polls. The state board can be called on to weigh in on disputes that cannot be settled at the county level.

“The rise in our board’s prominence was followed quickly by a fight between the legislative and executive branches over the appropriate level of political control we should expect in elections and ethics administration,” said Josh Lawson, counsel for the state Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement.

Cooper’s advocates have argued that the battle over the boards should not be viewed only as a power struggle between the political parties.

They say their fight is about protecting access to the ballot box in a state where Republican lawmakers tried with a short-lived voter ID requirement and elections law overhaul to limit voting opportunities for black voters who often vote Democratic.

Local election boards, which under the new law would have four members, set hours for early voting and other initiatives. If a local board deadlocked on calls for more sites where people could vote early, the fallback would be to go with the least number of sites, Cooper’s administrators have said.

Republicans have described their laws merging the elections and ethics enforcement boards as attempts to create a bipartisan board, though no such attempts to move away from the century-old five-member elections board were made while McCrory was governor.

The courts struck down two renditions of the merged board that would have had eight members, saying the way lawmakers structured it could create deadlock and hamper the governor from seeing that laws are executed because he would be "required to appoint half of the commission members from a list of nominees consisting of individuals who are, in all likelihood, not supportive of, if not openly opposed to, his or her policy preferences while having limited supervisory control over the agency and circumscribed removal authority over commission members," according to one ruling.

Lawmakers went back to the drawing board again last month and adopted a law creating a nine-member board. Cooper let the law take effect without his signature, saying he would not veto it because the bill was an omnibus that also included funding to help schools reduce class sizes, an idea he supported.

Nonetheless, Cooper maintains that lawmakers' latest rendition remains unconstitutional, and he again has turned to the courts for help.

Cooper has pointed out that lawmakers extended the tenure of the executive director of the state elections board who was selected when Republicans had control of both General Assembly and the governor’s office through the 2018 elections. Kim Strach, who currently holds the position, could be replaced only if the new board chose to do so. Strach, who has worked at the elections board for 18 years, is the wife of Phil Strach, a Raleigh attorney who has represented lawmakers on redistricting cases and their election law overhaul that was struck down by the courts.

After 288 days, new members

"We believe strongly that this third attempt by the legislature ... to rig the Board of Elections and limit people's right to vote is unconstitutional and we will continue pursuing our case," Ford Porter, the governor's spokesman, said earlier this week. "However, the case is likely to take months and it is important to have a board in place for the time being to administer the upcoming elections."

On Friday, Cooper revealed the eight members he appointed after forgoing appointments for 288 days.

The Democrats are:

▪ Andy Penry, an attorney based in Wake County;

▪ Joshua Malcolm, a former state Board of Elections member and general counsel at UNC-Pembroke. While on the elections board, Malcolm opposed measures that allowed counties to reduce the number of early voting hours.

▪ Valerie Johnson, a Durham-based attorney

▪ Stella Anderson, a business professor at Appalachian State University and Watauga County election board member who has tried to keep one-stop voting sites on the college campus where she works.

The Republicans are:

▪ Stacy "Four" Eggers IV, a former member of the Watauga County Board of Elections and lawyer from Boone who also provided legal counsel to the board when his brother, Luke Eggers, was the chairman. Luke Eggers' two-year stint brought criticism from the state board for salty language and questionable behavior during a meeting that was posted on YouTube and distributed widely on social media sites.

▪ John Randolph Hemphill, a Raleigh attorney.

▪ John Malachi Lewis, a Cabarrus County lawyer who serves as deputy counsel for the state Republican Party.

▪ Ken Raymond, chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Elections.

One of the first orders of business of the newly appointed board will be to select the names of two unaffiliated voters for the governor to consider for the ninth seat.

Functions of the merged board include appointing county board members, certifying election equipment for the counties to use and investigating possible violations of elections, ethics and lobbying laws.

Other issues awaiting the new board include candidate challenge appeals and a request from the Green Party to be recognized as a party in North Carolina, eliminating a requirement that members running for office have to petition to get on the ballot.

Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state Republican Party, congratulated Cooper for appointing the members and underscored his party's message.

"It is the duty of all members of the nine member board to make the new era of bi-partisan ethics and elections enforcement successful,"Woodhouse said in a statement. "I know our nominees are committed to finding consensus and expanding voting opportunities that are fair for all. How ever we got here, it is time to set aside the political battles over the board and for both Republicans and Democrats to make the new structure work. North Carolina Republicans will do all we can to make that happen."

Cooper's attorneys have contended in the latest lawsuit that Republicans were "simply tinkering around the edges" with the revamped board, and "have failed, yet again, to clear the constitutional bar set by our Supreme Court. "

[An earlier version of this story included inaccurate information on Valerie Johnson. The Valerie Johnson appointed to the new board is not Valerie Ann Johnson, the Bennett College professor on the state Historical Commission.]

This story was originally published March 16, 2018 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Here's who will preside over elections amid NC governor and GOP lawmakers' power struggle."