Madison Cawthorn Will NOT Be Kicked Off North Carolina Ballot Thanks To Technicality

Due to a technicality in the lawsuit filed to kick Madison Cawthorn off the North Carolina, the elections board in the state has decided to NOT remove him from the ballot. The technicality is that the voters who filed suit are no longer in his district, thanks to the new maps that were approved by courts this week. Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

A North Carolina elections board has decided that Republican representative Madison Cawthorn will not, not be kicked off the ballot in this year's midterm elections. And they came to this conclusion based on a court ruling from earlier in the week. And the court ruling earlier in the week was really to just approve the new district maps for the state of North Carolina. And wouldn't, you know, it, as luck would have it all 13 people, I believe it is that filed this lawsuit to get Madison Cawthorn kicked out. Suddenly all of them have been redistricted. Did redistrict did, I guess is how you would say that. My apologies. Um, yeah, so the elections board now had to come out and say, well, listen, since you are no longer in his district, because of the new maps that were just approved this week, um, your lawsuit cannot stand. You have no standing to Sue because you're not in his district anymore.

So, uh, he stays on the ballot. End of story. Case closed, right? Well for the moment. Yes. And of course I do understand that legal rationale, right? You're not in the district. He is technically not your congressperson anymore until the election, obviously. Uh, so you can't Sue because he's not even, you're not even gonna be able to vote for him or against him. So you have no standing. Um, however, all that has to happen in order for the suit to move forward, of course, is for people that do live now in this newly redrawn district to file the lawsuit. And I have to imagine that the lawyers, the groups who originally filed the lawsuit are already out there looking for new plaintiffs, because again, the elections, uh, uh, board did not kick this suit out on its merits. They said, because of this new technicality, you, you can't file the suit.

It was almost kind of a wink and an odd like, well, we'd love to give you a ruling on this, but you can't be the one to file it because you now do not live in this district. So again, it would be fairly easy. I have to imagine for these lawyers to go find people that do live in the district and say, Hey, we've got this lovely little lawsuit drawn up. Would you like to be the plaintiff? Now that may be easier said than done again. The district is different. Now, maybe harder to find 13, 10, 5, or even one person will to sign onto that lawsuit in that. Uh, what is it now? The 13th congressional district, but it's not over, right? There's still a chance other people come on, they file this lawsuit.

And then at least we can hear it on its merits, right? Because that's, what's important here. It's not just, oh, good. Let's stick it to Madison coauthor in any way possible. It is about let's let the case play out. Let's not dismiss it or get rid of it just based on technicalities because we redrew the maps. And again, as luck would have it, all of these people are now not in the district anymore. And of course the maps were drawn before the suit was filed. So you can't say that it was, you know, rigged that way. It wasn't, it's just, again, dumb luck on Madison, cath Thorn's part, but I bet they can find somebody else to do it. And I think they should. And I hope they do, because again, I wanna see this play out because this could have nationwide ramifications. If they do determine not only that Callthorne helped incite the insurrection or gave them support, but also that they legally define what happened as an insurrection, because that is the biggest question, mark of them all. And if we get that answered, it could open the door to kicking out a lot more Republicans before the midterms.