Fill the ballot

by | Dec 14, 2015 | 2016 Elections, Editor's Blog, NC Politics | 6 comments

Election reform advocate Lee Mortimer has an idea. He calls it “Win the Vote.” In heavily gerrymandered legislative and Congressional districts, Democrats might not be able to win a majority of seats, but they can win a majority of the votes cast for legislature or Congress. If that happens, Mortimer says, Republicans can’t claim “The people of North Carolina sent us here to do this.”

In 2012, Democrats actually won 51% of the votes cast for Congress but ended up in a 9-4 minority. The legislature split roughly evenly but the Republicans won a veto-proof majority of seats. As Mortimer points out, Democrats left 40 seats uncontested, giving GOP candidates uncontested votes. If the those seats had been contested, Democrats might not have won any more seats but they would have received a majority of legislative votes, making the GOP claims of serving the will of the people dubious at best.

Mortimer is right. Democrats need to fill every seat even if candidates don’t win and don’t even campaign. But it’s not just to win the vote. It’s to be in place if something unexpected happens or Republicans nominate a presidential candidate that precipitates a Democratic wave.

Every year, elected officials get caught in behavior that should end their political careers. They’ve got their hand in the till. Or they’re paying for personal items through their campaign accounts. Or they find themselves in bed with the wrong person. The saying “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” comes to mind. With the hint scandals rippling through the executive branch and the House leadership, Democrats need to be prepared to take advantage of GOP mishaps.

In the 2010 Republican wave, the GOP won seats because they contested every legislative race, not just the ones that were competitive. In 2016, they are poised to nominate either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, candidates that could cause a national Democratic wave. If the governor is under investigation for pay-to-play scandals, the wave could be even bigger in North Carolina. Democrats need to be prepared to take advantage if this scenario plays out. They can’t wait until summer to see what’s happening. Filing ends this week.

So if you’re a Democrat, living in a legislative district where a Republican is unopposed, put your name on the ballot. You don’t even have to run a campaign. If you win and don’t want to serve, resign and be replaced by a Democrat who does. But don’t give Republicans a free pass. If Democrats win the vote, then the GOP’s most extreme policies have little legitimacy. If your legislator gets caught in a compromised position, make sure he or she pays a price at the ballot box. If the GOP presidential candidate triggers a wave, make sure somebody is in place to take advantage of it. There are a lot of reasons to put your name on the ballot. Just pick one.

6 Comments

  1. Michelle

    So, where can you see who is running? Is there a site that lists candidates out there?

    • Matt Phillippi

      You can check the State Board of elections website for NCGA and Congressional races. County boards of elections should have lists for more local positions.

  2. Cosmic janitor

    Just as important as contesting all seats in all districts and races, is making certain that the vote you cast is counted for the candidate for whom you cast that vote. It is past time voters demand a paper trail of the vote they cast in order to prevent intentional and unintentional vote tallying mistakes by electronic and touch screen voting machines. Make no mistake about it, these machine are not tamper proof and have been shown to be easily and undetectably programable to swap votes to a particular candidate. Existing Proprietary Protection laws prevent independent inspections of any and all electronic tabulation machines – something which runs counter to transparently run democratic elections.

    • TY Thompson

      Agree, electronic voting should be outlawed, far too easy to manipulate or at least lacking in transparency. Unfortunately, that “there is no voter fraud” meme floating around out there, suggests that there’s no reason for concern.

    • Charles Hogan

      I agree with you entirely Cosmic. If you recall the North Carolina Board of Elections web site live feed election results page crashed several times during election night and there were several polling sites that were shut down for several hours as a result of “Voting Machine Programing issues. Security experts that were studying security issues in the machines stated that the machines could be hacked with ease using a smart phone. ( I republished the easy to follow directions in the daily Kos just to be sure all parties had a equal opportunity to exploit the flaws in a democratic way.

      One if the signs of tampering according to the wired.com article was voting machines crashing as hackers accessed the network though the target which happened here.

      Another dirty trick that the did was closing or moving polling locations adding 350,000 mile of travel distance between minority voters and there assigned voting location. That was the reasoning for restricting voters to there “Home” district in North Carolina. To make it much harder for minority voters to reach the correct voting location.

      Yes, the real problem that we have here in North Carolina is Election Fraud , not voter fraud as we are told by Republican propagandist.

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