The election cycle in North Carolina keeps evolving. Yesterday, the legislature moved the Congressional primaries to June 7 with a new filing period from March 16 to March 25. The House has proposed eliminating runoff elections for any elections this year. And a three-judge panel found retention elections for judges unconstitutional.
Legislators left the March primary intact for state offices and president. We’re still waiting to find out if legislative districts being contested in court will stand up to scrutiny. If the court rules they’re not constitutional, we could see more primaries later this year.
Supposedly, the purpose of moving the primaries from May to March was to save the state money by having only one primary while allowing North Carolina to have more influence in the presidential nominating process. So much for that theory. The GOP is continuing to waste tax payers’ money on bad legislation and bad decisions.
Their only good move is eliminating second primaries, or run off elections as they’re called. They should really do away with them altogether, not just for this year. They cost the taxpayers money for elections that have exceedingly low turnouts. The only people who really benefit from run off elections are consultants who make money every time there’s an election.
Retention elections for judges are really incumbent protection programs. In these elections, Supreme Court judges would not have opponents. Voters would merely vote whether or not to keep them. If voters decided against retention, candidates would then be able to run against the incumbent. Somebody would need deep pockets to run a very negative campaign to get rid of a sitting judge. Right now, the Supreme Court favors Republicans so this bill was another attempt to rig the system and subvert democracy. It was also another waste of taxpayer money.
We’re spending a whole lot of taxpayer dollars to defend legislation that is proving indefensible. Republicans are trying desperately to consolidate their power and limit democracy. In the coming years, demographics will favor Democrats. The state is getting younger and more diverse. The Republican Party is not. They know their tenure in power is limited unless they can rig the system.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
Yessir, you’d be correct. He didn’t run, but when all of this was coming about, he was in the midst of formulating a run for the office again before the General Assembly finally shut down that possibility just as you said. One would assume (up to that point falsely) that a convicted felon couldn’t hold elected office generally and the office of Sheriff particularly. But they would have been wrong.
Alexander Hamilton, writing in support of lifetime appointment of the judiciary said, “…Power over a man’s subsistence is power over his will.” Selecting judges by popular vote is not an ideal methodology. I’ve seen judges be targeted by members of the local bar because the judge tried to hold the attorney to the rules applicable to everyone else by not letting them come and go as they pleased and not providing preferential treatment in cases.
I likewise agree with both of you about retention elections. Either you’re fit to serve or you aren’t and there are means of removing a judge who is no longer fit. It’s time we removed partisan politics from our justice system.
Using an appointment/confirmation process the same as for Federal judges are appointed would serve NC well. Yes I’ve taken into account the lay of the land currently in Raleigh. I likewise realize that it will not last forever and the worm is already starting to turn.
There was a time when that would work; hitting reset and restoring back to a default of electing everyone. There was a time when a good measure of common sense and an average intellect would serve one well across a myriad of public service positions. People were known to practically the entire community in which they served so it was fairly easy to pick the right person for the job. Today however, we’ve become more technical, the guidelines are more stringent and complex, and with our highly mobile society, you might not be getting what you thought you were getting. It took the legislature how long to modify the qualifications for Sheriff by preventing the election of a convicted felon. That didn’t happen until the late 1990’s. One would think a convicted felon couldn’t get elected at all, but they’d be wrong on that account. And it didn’t happen until a particularly controversial Sheriff from one of the Piedmont counties tried to make a comeback after his felony conviction. If that person had been well favored by those in the legislature, who’s to say that would have happened and you could still be elected as a convicted felon. That’s the problem I have with electing to every office.
It can work, but not for the long term and with everything that is true today about politics, probably not very well. My personal opinion.
Most media outlets are not going to make a run at the local bar. Local media, while controlled by a corporate overlord in most cases, are too entrenched in the locale to be objective. That isn’t perhaps true in Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Asheville, or Charlotte. But get into the small to medium towns and cities and it’s the norm rather than the exception.
Advertising and not circulation is their bread and butter and local attorneys can account for a sizeable amount of legal advertising in any given year.
No, that is not reason not to do what’s right. But if right won out all the time, we wouldn’t be where we find ourselves concerning our governance now.
John Stuart Mill said “Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.” What bothers me is that they are not content to have the freedom to do as they please. They want EVERYONE to do it their way. I just hope their constituents who are getting squeezed in their fake effort to balance the budget (literally the first thing they did was to give themselves raises) are smart enough to realize that they put the people who are destroying their lives into office.