Republican legislatures flex muscles to keep power in closely divided North Carolina and Wisconsin

The other is potentially more consequential. It would strip the governor of the power to appoint members of the state election board and give that authority to the legislature.

Bill proponents say having leaders of both major parties picking equal numbers of board members would promote bipartisanship and consensus election policies.

But critics say having a board split evenly between the two parties would lead to gridlock, creating a situation where the stalemates would be settled by the Republican-controlled legislature or the Republican-dominated courts — a possibility that could include next year’s presidential contest.

The legislation also could lead to the possible ouster of the state’s respected elections director just months before the presidential election. There have been no widespread problems or concerns with voting in North Carolina under her watch.

“I’ve spoken out against these moves that are not about election security,” Cooper told reporters this past week. “They are only about keeping and gaining power for Republicans.”

Republicans contend the legislature should have more supervision of voting and other key regulatory functions. A bill already vetoed by Cooper would erode his appointment powers to boards that set electricity rates, make environmental policies and build roads.

“The legislature is the elected body closest to the people of North Carolina and has the ability to recruit a qualified, diverse roster of appointees,” Republican state Sen. Warren Daniel, a sponsor of the broader appointments bill, said recently.

That’s been a theme of North Carolina governance for centuries. The state has stood out for having an unusually strong legislature and weak governor, who was the last in the nation to be able to veto legislation, only gaining that power in 1997.

“Our state was founded with the notion that the legislative branch would be the branch with the most authority,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters in June. “Our state’s not set up with three separate co-equal branches. It was clearly contemplated and spelled out in the (state) Constitution that the legislative branch was to have the most authority because it’s the closest to people.”

That stands in sharp contrast with Wisconsin, where until recently the Legislature acted like a fairly typical law-making body. But since Republicans won the statehouse in 2010 and drew heavily gerrymandered maps that guaranteed their party’s control of both chambers, the Legislature has become increasingly confrontational with the states’ Democratic Governor, Tony Evers.

Republican lawmakers blocked Evers from installing many appointees on state boards. Last week, the state Senate voted to fire the state’s nonpartisan election director, drawing an immediate legal challenge. After voters overwhelmingly elected a Democratic-backed justice to the state Supreme Court earlier this year, flipping the majority from conservative to liberal for the first time in 15 years, the Legislature threatened to impeach her — even before she had heard a case.

Last week, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos offered to drop the impeachment if Democrats agreed to a new redistricting process he cast as nonpartisan, something Evers rejected as a sham proposal. To Dale Schultz, a former Republican state senator, the sharpness of Evers’ rejection symbolized the depths to which Wisconsin politics have plunged.

“Nobody wants half a loaf; they’d rather starve,” Schultz said. He reserved most of his scorn, however, for the Legislature’s maneuvers.

“We see increasingly desperate measures to hang onto power,” he said.

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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.