NC Democrats who overturned vetoes sided with those who are overturning democracy | Opinion

Like a lot of Tar Heel Democrats, I’ve been much disheartened by the veto override votes. There are a lot of reasons this might be so — betraying voters who worked for and supported the defecting representatives only months ago, embracing values that are an anathema to one’s constituents, weakening the Democratic Party overall, taking away necessary authority from the governor and more. I also think these Democratic departures fail to meet the moment we face in North Carolina. You don’t join hands with people who are trying to disenfranchise you and destroy your form of government.

Here is how it works.

First, the new North Carolina Republican Supreme Court says extreme political gerrymandering is fine. Chief Justice Paul Newby explains, almost comically, that Tar Heels deserve “free” but not “fair” elections. Rigged elections are still free.

Then the legislature acts to carry out the permitted corruption. So, in 2024, Democrats won the major statewide races — because you can’t gerrymander them. But, even though more Tar Heels voted for Democrats than Republicans to represent them in the General Assembly, Republicans got nearly two-thirds of the seats. Cheating works.

But that’s not enough. Republicans, being repeatedly disappointed in statewide races, develop a second plan, largely unseen in the United States. When Democrats win state positions — like Josh Stein in 2024 or Roy Cooper before him – state Sen. Phil Berger, Sr and his colleagues sweep away the traditional powers of the newly-elected Democratic officeholder and deliver them to Republicans.

You know the drill — we make the Auditor the overseer of elections, though no one in NC voted for that and no state in the nation has the auditor oversee elections. We shuffle the deck until we get the executive powers distributed in just the way Berger wants them. Not the way the voters assumed or the North Carolina constitution commands. And Berger won’t even tell us what’s going to happen until after he sees the election results. Nice gig. Maybe next time he’ll make the Agriculture Commissioner head of the SBI. As long as he’s a Republican.

This power grab would be invalidated in any state that has an actual state supreme court. It is as unconstitutional as the day is long. But we don’t have an actual state supreme court. Our Republican majority (or four of them) are not judges. They are politically corrupted knaves. They do only the work of the party, not the law. They aren’t even embarrassed about it.

And there’s no federal court to fix the outrage. State separation of powers issues are, in our system of government, reserved to state tribunals. We assume that state courts are not crooked. For folks in North Carolina, that assumption can be crushing.

So we have a Republican legislature that exercises illegitimate and disproportionate powers because it has captured the election process for its members. Then the General Assembly proceeds to debilitate the executive branch through sore loser laws that effectively overturn statewide elections when lawmakers don’t like the results. And a co-conspiratorial state supreme court abets the transgressions, eliminating constitutional government in North Carolina.

Sadly, this is not exaggeration or fantasy. It is the political world that presently exists in the Tar Heel State. No person who believes in democracy should support, or compromise with or lend a hand to this defining betrayal. When someone is out to demolish your most foundational human rights and destroy the American tradition of constitutional government, no one should ever say: “Hey buddy, can I meet you halfway?”

Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.