Editorial: Resignation of elections director is past due

When the next election cycle rolls through, be it this fall as scheduled or in 2022 as the state director wishes, we hope she’s not around to oversee it.

Karen Brinson Bell should resign her position as executive director of the state Board of Elections. There’s no confidence in her ability to be impartial. And her words to members of the state Senate confirm she hasn’t a clue about what it means to be trustworthy.

How can we trust someone who changes the election after it has started? How can we trust someone who says they didn’t change it when they did?

Even before Gov. Roy Cooper made it law to wear a face covering, Bell was already at work sabotaging state law. In fact, she was at it within days of Cooper closing schools for the first time on March 16 last year.

In the last week of March 2020, she cited the virus and proposed 15 election law changes in a letter to Cooper and the General Assembly. She called them temporary, when in fact, only two had such language.

With absentee voting already started, Bell oversaw a deal with notorious Democratic legal counsel Marc Elias. The “settlement” changed how the election worked with regard to those absentee ballots. County election boards across the state were in a holding pattern as to what to do with ballots that arrived with certain issues covered by state law as created by the General Assembly.

All because Bell was making changes after the election had started.

In front of the state senators last month, Bell said, “The rules were changed, but the laws were not changed.”

We agree with Forsyth County Sen. Joyce Krawiec, who told her, “I just find it amazing that you still believe that you didn’t change a law.”

Krawiec is not alone.

Judge William Osteen, last year after it happened, said, “This court has serious concerns about the conduct of the North Carolina State Board of Elections.” Further, he said the behavior was “a flagrant misuse of this court’s injunctive relief” and the board’s actions “appear to ignore the rule of law.”

Judge James Dever said the state board “ignored statutory scheme and arbitrarily created multiple, disparate regimes under which North Carolina voters cast absentee ballots.”

For what she and the board enacted, said the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, “the entire body politic pays a grievous price.”

It gets worse. The Democrats on the Senate panel said no judge had declared she did something illegal.

Bell’s actions last spring were horrific. She preyed upon the vulnerabilities of people when they knew little about the deadly virus to inflict fear of what could happen during the election.

Her actions in the fall were incredulous. Not only did she change the rules after the election began, the settlement that put that in motion was negotiated for her by Swaim Wood — top man in state Attorney General Josh Stein’s office.

Yes, the same Stein who was on the ballots being marked.

How can North Carolinians trust Karen Brinson Bell? We can’t.

Her resignation is long overdue.