North Carolina elections board says it has power to bar Cawthorn from running over Jan. 6

The North Carolina elections board said in a court filing Monday it has the power to bar Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) from running for office over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. 

“The State does not judge the qualifications of the elected members of the U.S. House of Representative. It polices candidate qualifications prior to the elections,” the board wrote in a filing to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Cawthorn. 

“In doing so, as indicated above, States have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges. The State has the same authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the board added.

Cawthorn filed a lawsuit after a group of liberal activists began attempting to get him barred from office due to what they say were disqualifying actions leading up to the Capitol riot. 

Leading up to the riot, Cawthorn repeated former President Trump’s false election fraud claims and spoke at a rally hours before the riot began. Opponents of Cawthorn say he engaged in the insurrection, which disqualifies him from office because it violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. 

“Running for office is not only a great privilege, it is a right protected under the Constitution,” Cawthorn said when filing his lawsuit. “I love this country and have never engaged in, or would ever engage in, an insurrection against the United States. Regardless of this fact, the Disqualification clause and North Carolina’s Challenge Statute is being used as a weapon by liberal Democrats to attempt to defeat our democracy by having state bureaucrats, rather than the People, choose who will represent North Carolina in Congress.”