By Chris Cooper
This week's memo from the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) lays it out pretty clearly: “the Constitution
and Green Party are no longer recognized political parties in North Carolina.” As of January 27, 2021, neither party is listed listed on the
voter
registration application (h/t Gerry Cohen, the oracle of NC
election law, for linking this on his Twitter account). Unless they can successfully re-qualify for ballot access before the February 22, 2021 meeting of the NCSBE (h/t to everybody's favorite Libertarian candidate, Sean Haugh for spelling this out clearly), members of both parties will have their party affiliation
switched automatically to Unaffiliated.
The elimination of both parties wasn't done out of spite, but rather because neither party achieved "the required 2% of the total vote for their candidate for
governor or for presidential electors in the 20202 general election” (see this piece from Danielle Battaglia for a good run-down on what happened).
Given the impending demise of both parties, it seems like as good a time as any to take a look at life and times of the Green and Constitution parties to see if it can teach us anything about the future of party registration in the Old North State.
