New Hampshire Republican leaders must be watching developments in North Carolina closely these days. The GOP-dominated Legislature in the Tar Heel state is giving a master class in power-grabs, moving to cut the governor’s authority because Roy Cooper, who will become governor after winning an extremely close race, is a Democrat. The people have spoken, but the Legislature is having the last word.

In a brazen turn of events, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature in a lame-duck session last Friday voted to strip the governor of the power to make Cabinet appointments without Senate (Republican-dominated, naturally) confirmation. The governor also stands to lose the ability to control the hiring of about 1,200 state employees and to name trustees of the University of North Carolina. The former is presumably about power and the latter, in a state where college sports are exalted enterprises, glory.

The outgoing governor, Pat McCrory, a Republican, quickly signed a bill that stripped future governors of their power to appoint a majority to the State Board of Elections. He hadn’t complained of the burden of holding this power during his administration.

The incoming governor will try to get the courts to block the Legislature’s actions. Indeed, a federal appeals court this year struck down as unconstitutional new voting laws that the court deemed an effort to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

Republicans had the audacity to talk of their latest moves as “reforms,’’ and offered up the justification of Democrats doing similar things to them in the past — the distant past, since the GOP has been in the ascendancy in recent years. Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, disagreed that the Legislature’s moves constituted business as usual. “Sure, the Democrats don’t have clean hands, but this is beyond anything I’ve seen them do,’’ he told The New York Times. “I think we’re in unprecedented, uncharted territory with this.”

And that is why residents of other states should care about what happens in North Carolina. Other Republican-controlled states have been aggressively gerrymandering House districts to the benefit of GOP candidates, enacting voter I.D. laws and making registration changes that repress minority voting. This is done in the fantasy cause of rolling back voting fraud, the Loch Ness Monster of American politics.

In New Hampshire, Gov.-elect Chris Sununu has said voting reform is a priority for the next legislative session, but so-called reform would mostly tip the scales in favor of the GOP in future elections through such actions as eliminating same-day registration. Call the strategy North Carolina Lite.

Events in North Carolina suggest that the process of grabbing and holding onto power may be accelerating, overriding democratic principles such as enabling more citizens to vote and ensuring fair elections. Power, and not principle, hold the day, which is a sad one for American politics.