Right-wing political activists call for NC lawmakers to decide 2024 presidential election results after Hurricane Helene's impact

A group of right-wing political activists is calling for North Carolina lawmakers to decide how the state votes in 2024, overriding the right of the people to cast their ballots.

The group said Hurricane Helene’s damage has made it impossible to have a secure election.

Ivan Raiklin has dubbed himself former President Donald Trump’s “secretary of retribution.”

Raiklin was a speaker this past weekend at a Christian Nationalist rally in Selma. He told the crowd the election would be rigged, and the only way to protect it is to pressure Republican state lawmakers to intervene and throw out the results if Trump doesn’t win.

“They have the political obligation to remedy an illegitimate election,” Raiklin told the crowd.

Raiklin did not respond to WRAL News’ interview request.

Raiklin told rally attendees that Helene’s destruction provides a rationale because it will cast doubt on the election results.

“Post offices were shut down to send in mail-in ballots, right?” Raiklin said. “Is that going to impact those western counties?”

State lawmakers passed a law earlier this month easing election rules and making it easier to vote for people in the 25 counties under the federal disaster declaration due to Helene.

“How many of those counties are majority Republican voters? Almost all of them, if not all of them,” Raiklin said.

Twenty-three of the 25 counties voted for Trump in 2020. Joe Biden won Buncombe and Watauga counties in 2020.

Longtime legislative expert Gerry Cohen wrote most of the state’s election laws during his 32-year tenure in the legislature’s bill drafting office. He said state lawmakers can’t do what Raiklin is proposing because federal law doesn’t allow states to change their electoral laws after an election has already happened.

“The legislature can’t do anything under the current law,” Cohen said. “It could only do something if the governor failed to certify the election results.”

A spokesman for the state board of elections also said that what Raiklin is proposing would violate state law.

Noel Fritsch, an associate of Raiklin’s, disagrees.

“None of that trumps the Constitution,” Fritsch said.

Like Raiklin, Fritsch also believes state lawmakers, not voters, should decide this presidential election if Trump doesn’t win in North Carolina.

WRAL News asked Fritsch whether throwing out the votes of North Carolina voters and letting state lawmakers decide the presidential election would amount to disenfranchisement.

“No,” Fritsch said. “They’ve elected their representatives, and we don’t have any direct democracy.”

Fritsch said their group has contacted some state lawmakers, who will be back in town for another disaster relief session Thursday.

WRAL News asked Republican House Speaker Tim Moore and Republican Senate Leader Phil Berger if they had heard from Raiklin. They did not respond.