Raleigh, N.C. – North Carolina lawmakers, voters, and a Congressional candidate, have filed a federal lawsuit to stop the the backroom elections deal struck by Democrats’ top D.C. attorney with his former client Gov. Roy Cooper and state Attorney General Josh Stein.
The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order against the scheme and follows a press conference Friday that detailed the secret settlement reached by the Democratic Attorney General with a Democratic Party front group he recently gave the keynote address to at an annual convention – on elections.
When confronted Friday with the stunningly collusive optics of the “settlement” he struck with the top elections attorney for the Democratic Party, Attorney General Stein called a reporter’s concerns “noise.”
The Lawsuit
Over 1 million North Carolinians requested their absentee ballots, and over 220,000 returned them prior to the State Board of Elections attempting to arbitrarily change state law, the lawsuit notes, asserting the consent agreement thus violates the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The board is administering the election in “an arbitrary and nonuniform manner” that inhibits North Carolinians who have already cast their ballot from voting on an equal basis with citizens who would vote after, the lawsuit contends, actions that would “allow otherwise unlawful votes to be counted, thereby deliberately diluting and debasing lawful votes.”
The filing notes that courts have repeatedly upheld the same statutes the State Board of Elections is now trying to unilaterally reform without authority, and the Rules Review Commission previously rejected their efforts in a unanimous 9-0 vote.
As a “creature of statute,” the lawsuit notes, the state board lacks the power to change state law.
“By usurping the General Assembly’s constitutional prerogative to “[p]rescribe” the “Times, Places and Manners” of the federal election, the Board is violating the Elections Clause,” the lawmakers’ complaint asserts.
“This agreement was official action, taken without constitutional or statutory authority, to influence the 2020 election after voting already started in a disgrace to American due process,” Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) said .“We have asked the court to preserve North Carolinians’ right to a fair and nonpartisan elections system free from backroom schemes launched after over 200,000 voters have already cast their ballots.”
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