RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina Court of Appeals on Wednesday cleared the way for a law stripping election oversight power from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein to go into effect, reversing the order of a lower court which had ruled it unconstitutional.

State Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican, is now poised to gain control over the State Board of Elections on Thursday, likely flipping the powerful board’s partisan majority for the first time since 2017.

The court’s decision, which was delivered by a unanimous but unnamed three-judge panel, upholds election changes passed in Senate Bill 382, a law Republican legislators enacted in the final days of their veto-proof supermajority in the General Assembly.

While the court did not fully rule on the merits of the case, they issued a stay blocking the lower court’s order, which in practical terms will allow the law to take effect.

Stein immediately appealed the ruling to the North Carolina Supreme Court, asking justices to intervene quickly and halt the decision before Boliek is able to replace election board members — ending their terms two years early.

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 allows the governor to appoint a 3-2 majority of members from their own party.

In a statement, Stein suggested the ruling was a “threat to our democracy” and that Republicans would use their new influence over elections to assist Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin in overturning his narrow 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,” he said. “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.”

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, SB 382 shifts it 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.

In a 2-1 ruling earlier this month, a Republican and Democratic judge in Wake County Superior Court agreed with Stein that the power shift was unconstitutional.

“The Constitution prevents the legislature from unreasonably disturbing the vesting of ‘the executive power’ in the governor or the governor’s obligation to take care that the laws are faithfully executed,” the majority opinion, authored by Judges Edwin Wilson and Lori Hamilton, said.

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