News

Nov 14, 2023

Should NC call new elections when politicians switch parties? Some Democrats think so

Democrats in the state Senate want North Carolina to hold a special election if

Democrats in the state Senate want North Carolina to hold a special election if an elected official changes political parties.

They say they’ll file a bill dubbed "The Voter Fraud Protection Act," which would call for such elections, and would also require campaign contributions to a party-switching official to be refunded. A press conference will be held Tuesday at 10 a.m., where Democratic state Sens. Sydney Batch, Michael Garrett and Natasha Marcus plan to speak along with "constituents who have recently been impacted."

The bill is likely in response to state Rep. Tricia Cotham switching to the Republican Party in April, giving Republicans a veto-proof supermajority in the General Assembly. Since then, some Democrats have called for her to resign her seat in the legislature.

"That is not the person that was presented to the voters of House District 112. That is not the person those constituents campaigned for in a hard primary, and who they championed in a general election in a 60% Democratic district," House Minority Leader Robert Reives said in a statement at the time. "Those constituents deserved to know what values were most important to their elected representative."

Republicans, who hold supermajorities in the House and the Senate, have celebrated Cotham's switch, making it very unlikely that the proposed bill will pass.

"As long as I have been a Democrat, the Democrats have tried to be a big tent. But this now, where we are, the modern-day Democratic Party has become unrecognizable to me, and to so many others throughout the state and the country," Cotham said at a press conference after her switch. "The party wants to villainize who has free thought, free judgment, has solutions, who wants to get to work to better our state, not just sit in a meeting and have a workshop after a workshop."

Unlike the laws in 19 states, North Carolina law does not have a provision under which Cotham can be recalled, The Charlotte Observer previously reported. Voters will have to wait until 2024 to potentially vote her out.

Party switching, though rare, does have some precedent in the state legislature. Most notably, state Rep. Michael Decker changed his affiliation from Republican to Democrat in 2003 after a $50,000 bribe from then-House Speaker Jim Black, who needed Decker's vote to remain speaker following the prior year's elections. Both Decker and Black went on to serve prison time.

In the 1970s, state Reps. Carolyn Mathis and Ralph Ledford switched parties from Republican to Democrat just two sessions apart, The News & Observer previously reported. More recently, in 2015, state Rep. Paul Tine changed his affiliation from Democrat to unaffiliated.