James Wynn will be sworn in as a member of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals today at 5 p.m.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Wynn last week, and President Barack Obama formally appointed him at noon today, Lynn Bonner reports.
N.C. Supreme Court Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson will administer the oath at the Appeals Court in Raleigh, Wynn said, and his other former appellate court colleagues will attend.
Wynn, a former state Appeals Court judge, delivered his resignation to Gov. Bev Perdue's office today. Wynn was first nominated to the bench 11 years ago. His confirmation came after months of delay.
"I'm just pleased to be where I am right now," he said. "I'm very grateful to Senators (Richard) Burr and (Kay) Hagan."
Correction: Changes Patricia Timmons-Goodson's title.
Comments
The comment is on topic (if, perhaps, accidentally)
August 11, 2010 - 2:50pm — captsfufpB/c the question is now ... how is Wynn's vacancy on the state Court of Appeals to be filled?
Certainly the governor can appoint someone, but that individual would still have to go through the election process. According to state law, b/c of when we are on the calendar, candidates will be able to file for the Court of Appeals seat once the State Board of Elections announces the filing period. However, since the primary period has past, the number of candidates will not be limited. So how will we determine a winner, even if no one gets a majority? According to state statute, the way we will vote for Court of Appeals is by .... instant runoff voting! So A) it will be interesting who files and B) it will be interesting to see the state use of IRV.
(For those playing at home, NCGS 163-329(b1)(2))
here's a comment that's on topic
August 11, 2010 - 7:22am — awbealTimmons-Goodson is a North Carolina Supreme Court Justice now. She is a FORMER Court of Appeals judge.
The Voting Machines can't count it, so how will this be tallied?
August 10, 2010 - 11:33pm — joycemccloyThere is no certified software to tally IRV. So how is this going to be done? Find an illegal way to do it? In touchscreen counties it will be nearly impossible to tally IRV using the paper trail. Instead, officials would be asked to copy vote data to a spreadsheet, following 5 pages of single spaced instructions. What could possibly go wrong.....
The only way to "automate" IRV on the optical scanners is to run the ballots through the machine, reprogram the memory card, then run through again (up to 4 times per ballot) until you have a winner. Or you can count the ballots by hand as did Cary NC in 2007. But Cary had trouble counting just 3,000 ballots correctly and it took most of the day, plus another day to do over since first count was wrong.
But IRV really isn't feasible for elections that cross county borders.
In case you don't understand why IRV is hard to tally, read on:
IRV is not additive. There is no such thing as a "subtotal" in IRV. In IRV every single vote may have to be sent individually to the central agency. If the central agency then computes the winner, and then some location sends a correction, that may require redoing almost the whole computation over again. There could easily be 100 such corrections and so you'd have to redo everything 100 times. Combine this scenario with a near-tie and legal and extra-legal battle like in Bush-Gore Florida 2000 over the validity of every vote, and this adds up to a complete nightmare for the election administrators.
North Carolina procedures for counting IRV elections error prone and risky
7 Ways Instant Runoff Voting Undermines North Carolina Verified Voting law
This will be an interesting election indeed. With lawyers/jurists as potential plaintiffs in any election related lawsuit, and with IRV violating so many sections of existing law, this could result in quite a mess. In this case, if the election is close, or if the IRV votes come into play, the victims of the scheme may very well challenge the results in court.
IRV is bad for voters, and bad for election transparency.
More at ncvoter (dot) net
IRV too risky to use for statewide elections!
August 10, 2010 - 5:26pm — telephotoncIt's too bad that our own State Board of Elections declared that IRV is too risky to use for statewide elections back in 2007. They have also said our equipment isn't certified to do IRV even if they use their jury-rigged hybrid systems. If we have an election meltdown in any IRV election - the vendor won't pay for the costs of doing recounts or holding re-do elections, leaving the state holding the bill.
The Greensboro paper had this to say about IRV judicial elections:
For elections to fill a judicial vacancy when there’s no time to hold a primary, a 2006 state law creates “instant runoff voting” in case there are more than two candidates and none receives a majority of the vote. Under this scheme, voters are asked to rank their top three choices in order of preference, and a second round of counting determines the winner.
This will prove to be impossibly confusing to voters, many of whom have trouble deciding even one candidate they think is most qualified. Ranking three is likely to require guesswork. It would be better if the law allowed the governor to appoint a replacement to serve until the next election, when candidates then could run on a normal schedule. That’s what would happen if this vacancy occurred after Sept. 3.
Popular election is not the best way of selecting judges anyway, and instant runoff voting won’t make an improvement. But the federal system has its flaws as well — especially when partisan politics subjects qualified nominees to long delays.
Since we can't hold a primary election for the statewide Appeals Court seat, why not just hold a general election, and use a runoff in December if one is needed? It would be cheaper and not cause damage to election integrity by running a risky hybrid jury-rigged statewide IRV election.