Republicans' assault on military votes

The GOP-controlled court tramples on voting rights of people serving overseas.

When young people sign up for military service, they make a deal. They do what they’re told and go where they’re sent without question. In return, they’re provided food, housing, health care, and afforded the rights of citizenship wherever they are for the duration of their enlistment. You can vote in every election as long as you follow the rules to secure an absentee ballot. Unless you live in North Carolina.

If you live here, the Republican Party believes some military votes count and some don’t, even if you follow all of the rules. They won’t guarantee your vote will count and they will change the rules of elections after the fact. And they do it with the backing of the GOP-controlled Supreme Court. The Court has ruled that people who are willing to put their lives on the line to serve our country should have their votes disqualified.

When the 2024 election began, military personnel who were serving overseas were told that they did not need a voter identification to vote. And some don’t. If those service members live in the counties that Republicans prefer, their votes counted without using a voter ID. But if they lived in a county that Republicans don’t like, well, then the rules changed after the election and the votes they cast legitimately before the election are no long acceptable. They are suddenly required to provide a voter ID—five months after the election.

You see, Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin and the North Carolina Republican Party are not willing to cede the election despite having lost it. After two separate recounts determined that Griffin had lost the election to Justice Allison Riggs by around 740 votes, he and the GOP decided that they could win by disallowing votes that had already been accepted. They specifically targeted service members. They launched a frontal assault on military voters and their right to vote.

The argument itself sounds absurd. The people whose votes they challenged followed the rules as they stood at the time of the election. Their votes were accepted and certified. Griffin contends that the rules were wrong. Even if the court agreed, the decision should be applied moving forward, not retroactively. The court is penalizing military voters who did everything right and were told their votes would count. It’s a travesty that undermines our democracy.

In addition, the law is not applied equally. The Republicans cherry-picked the votes they wanted to void. They went after voters who lived in heavily Democratic areas. They are disproportionately people of color and overwhelmingly Democratic. Few Republican votes got challenged. So the rules for some voters are different than they are for others.

The court also denied the votes of people living in other countries who have supposedly never lived in North Carolina but who are US citizens and whose parents were registered here when they were born. Many have been voting in the state for years. According to reporter Bryan Anderson, at least 16 of those people have actually lived here.

If they aren’t eligible to vote here, where are they eligible? I have two grandsons who are both US citizens who live in Sweden and have since they were born. Where will they vote? Will they be denied the right to vote?

This whole episode is an injustice. The Republicans who control our appellate courts are putting their thumbs on the scale for partisan gain. They are punishing people for the votes they cast, not determining the legality of our system of elections. Their decision will do permanent damage to our democracy because voters will never know if the votes they cast can be later tossed. More importantly, they are harming the reputation of the court itself. If those judges will stoop so low as to disenfranchise the people who protect our country to secure a partisan win, what else will they do to maintain their power?