RALEIGH, N.C. — Using new powers granted by the General Assembly, State Auditor Dave Boliek appointed new members to North Carolina’s powerful State Board of Elections on Thursday, giving Republicans a majority for the first time since 2016.

Boliek announced his appointment of three Republicans to the five-member board, one of whom currently serves as a member.

“Managing our elections is no small task. It takes time, dedication, and professionalism,“ Boliek said in a statement. “We need full confidence in our elections, and I’d like to thank these individuals for their willingness to serve.”

The new members are:

•Francis De Luca of Wilmington. De Luca previously served as president of the the Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank. He is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and also previously served on the State Ethics Commission.

•Robert Anthony Rucho of Catawba County. Rucho served in the North Carolina Senate for nearly 17 years as a Republican.

•Stacy Clyde Eggers IV of Boone. Eggers, a lawyer, is a current member of the State Board of Elections.

Democrats have presented a list of four nominees to Boliek, who will pick two of them. They are all either current Democratic members of the board or former members.

In a letter announcing the nominees to Boliek, Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, called the unprecedented power shift a “hostile takeover.”

“We fervently believe that established precedent and our constitutional allocation of powers has given our elected governor the right to name the members of the Board of Elections,” she said. “Republicans’ passage of an unconstitutional bill wrenching that power from the governor’s office and giving it to you is an abuse of power and a disservice to the people of North Carolina. You were not elected to do this duty. It has been given to you, not by the people of the state, but by partisan politicians.”

Boliek’s appointments come just one day after the state Court of Appeals allowed a law to take effect stripping Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of his power to select the board’s members. A bipartisan trial court had previously declared that change unconstitutional, but the appeals court reversed its ruling in a decision by three unnamed judges without holding arguments.

Stein asked the state Supreme Court to halt the appeals court’s ruling before Boliek gained the powers, but justices did not issue a ruling in time.

The power shift upends the practice in place for over a century in which the governor alone has had the power to appoint members of election boards. That arrangement also allowed the governor to appoint a 3-2 majority of members from their own party.

Republican state lawmakers have tried multiple times to shift this process in their favor since Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, won election in 2016. All of their previous attempts were either blocked by courts or rejected by voters when proposed as a constitutional amendment.

But rather than giving the appointment power to themselves, as lawmakers have attempted to do in the past, Republicans tried a different strategy in December. In the final days of the GOP’s veto-proof supermajority, they enacted Senate Bill 382 — which was initially billed as a Helene relief package — to strip the governor and other newly elected Democrats of their powers.

SB 382 shifts election board appointments to the auditor, a move they argue keeps the power within the executive branch and therefore does not violate the state constitution. It is an entirely unique setup, with no other state auditor in the entire country having similar powers over elections.

Democrats have warned that Republicans could use their newfound influence over the elections board to assist Jefferson Griffin in his ongoing attempt to overturn his loss in the 2024 state Supreme Court race.

“I fear that this decision is the latest step in the partisan effort to steal a seat on the Supreme Court,” Stein said in a statement Wednesday. “No emergency exists that can justify the Court of Appeals’ decision to interject itself at this point. The only plausible explanation is to permit the Republican State Auditor to appoint a new State Board of Elections that will try to overturn the results of the Supreme Court race.”

Who are the new members?

Boliek selected his appointments from a list of nominees presented by the chair of each political party.

All of them have been involved with elections in some way, either previously serving on the board or being involved in high-profile election litigation.

Rucho, who previously served as chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, brought a gerrymandering case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 in defense of the state’s Republican-drawn congressional map.

A district court had struck down the map, agreeing with challengers that it was illegally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. But Rucho appealed, arguing that claims of partisan gerrymandering were not within the jurisdiction of courts.

In a 5-4 decision, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court agreed with Rucho, setting a nationwide precedent that prevents litigants from bringing federal cases over partisan gerrymandering.

De Luca has also been involved in at least one voting lawsuit. In 2016, as head of the Civitas Institute, he sued to delay the final vote count in North Carolina’s elections.

His challenge dealt with voters who used same-day registration, which allows residents to register to vote and cast their ballot at the same time. De Luca argued that there wasn’t enough time to verify the addresses of same-day registrants before their votes were counted.

“We think same-day registration is a bad policy,” De Luca said at the time. “This is the about the best way we can use the courts to show that it is.”

Republicans attempted to nominate De Luca to the elections board in 2017 as part of a previous attempt to wrest control of elections from the governor. That effort ultimately failed and De Luca never joined the board.

As for Eggers, he has served on the State Board of Elections since 2018. Prior to that, he served on the Watauga County Board of Elections from 2005 to 2013.

Democrats have nominated four members to the board, two of whom —Siobhan O’Duffy Millen and Jeff Carmon — are current members.

The other two nominees, Stella Anderson and J. Anthony Penry, have previously served on the board.

Boliek has not yet announced which two Democrats he will select from this list.

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