WHEN, last week, Pat McCrory finally admitted defeat in North Carolina’s governor’s contest, belatedly abandoning his graceless demand for a recount, it looked as if Republican efforts to sway the state’s elections had finally been exhausted. A voter-ID rule, and other restrictions passed by Republican legislators, had been thrown out by a federal court that found they targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision”; still, say voting-rights activists, limited opportunities for early voting nevertheless suppressed black turnout in November. Gerrymandering, meanwhile, had already helped to assure Republican supermajorities in the state legislature, which will enable lawmakers to override the veto of Roy Cooper, the new Democratic governor—a reason, some in North Carolina thought, that they might not be too distressed by his victory.
Alas, that view overestimated their maturity. This week state Republicans called an additional special session of the General Assembly, in which they are considering a series of bills to dilute the power of the governorship before Mr Cooper assumes it on January 1st; assuming, as seems plausible, that Mr McCrory, the defeated...Continue reading
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