The NCGOP is rolling out a cynical plan to boost Republican turnout in November. They’re loading up the ballot with constitutional amendments intended to motivate their base. They’re mostly bad ideas designed to lock in conservative principles that will harm working class and minority voters. Voters should reject them all.
Still, let’s go through a couple. The most notorious is the voter ID amendment. The amendment would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls. The problem lies in the details. There are none. The substance of the law would be determined by the legislature. It’s part of the GOP’s attempt to circumvent the court and enact their massive voter suppression piecemeal. I’m not as anti-voter ID as some folks, but I certainly don’t believe we should be using the constitution to limit rights. If we need a voter ID law, pass it as a bill but leave the constitution alone. That, by the way, is a conservative position.
The GOP’s effort to cap income tax in North Carolina is an attempt to ensure that working people continue to pick up an increasing share of the tax burden. At a time when income inequality is at an all-time high and taxes, especially for rich people, are at an all-time low, this bill makes sure that in times of need, we’ll reduce the spending power of the poor and middle class instead of asking the most privileged among us to pay a little more.
Other amendments would reduce the power of the executive branch purely because a Democrat holds the office. That’s certainly not a reason to alter the constitution and is really an attack on the separation of powers. North Carolina has historically kept the governor’s powers among the weakest in the nation. Reducing it more just strengthens the hand of Republicans who are protecting their power through gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Who knows what else is going to be on the ballot, but we should oppose them all. Amending the constitution should not be done lightly and it should certainly not be done to further a political agenda. It should be done to protect the people of the state. Just say no to rigging the state constitution.
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 >
The “photo ID” thing makes me laugh. With the way technology changes (and the speed of the change) there will probably soon be some kind of new technology that renders photo ID moot. What if, in the past, they had done an amendment that required everyone to bring a horseshoe with them or something like that?
Loading up the North Carolina constitution with “laws” usually means the legislature doesn’t have the political courage to vote on them. Or, to enshrine statutes in a document difficult to change. North Carolina needs a constitutional convention to update our constitution. If the General Assembly really wants to change the fundamental nature of our constitution they should provide the way for elected Delegates to do it, and not do it themselves.
Exactly. Thank you.
The members of the NC General Assembly ARE elected. The primary reason liberals support a constitutional convention of elected delegates is to circumvent the election of state senators and representatives and the vote of the people on proposed amendments. In effect, it is an effort to empower an elite minority to circumvent majority rule.
The problem Is they were “elected” by gerrymandering. Guess they were afraid to be voted on by the people they are supposed to represent.
This is 2018, and the original gerrymandering began in 2010. The districts have been unconstitutional, so said every court ruling since, for nearly a decade. The GOP has been running an scam all that time. They want to make it permanent.
The original gerrymandering began long before 2010 and was primarily the product of Democratic legislatures.
Give Ebrun a cigar. Gerrymandering has been around a long time.
Governor Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts is credited with the first instance of redistricting to favor himself. The district he drew resembled a salamander. Even though his name is pronounced with a hard “G” (like Gary,) the practice became known as Gerrymandering (“Jerry,” for some reason). The practice dates back to 1812.
Both parties have taken advantage of the practice over the centuries, but there was a sea change in 2010 after the constitutionally-mandated decennial census which triggers redistricting.
By 2010, two things existed that had never been true before. First, computing in the hands of the public and the political parties became vastly more powerful than ever in history. Secondly, personal data on voters (through public sources such as Facebook and Twitter, to name a few) made it possible to draw district lines with great precision. The guesswork and hunches of the past evolved into a science. The map drawers could exclude a portion of a street or neighborhood and favor a particular candidate. No more guessing.
Democrats failed to appreciate the extent to which gerrymandering had changed our world.
Prior to 2010, In 2008, Democrats sent 8 members to the house, while Republicans sent 5, numbers roughly proportional to their numbers. After 2010, gerrymandering changed the landscape in North Carolina and across the country. Republicans took more than 1000 seats in Congress and state legislatures due, in large part, to the rigging of the districts.
In North Carolina by 2014, Republicans took 10 of the 13 House seats or 77% of the seats, but Republicans represented only 55% of the vote.
Republicans were over-represented – not because they were more popular, but because their computer program, REDMAP, had created districts which denied Democrats representation in proportion to their numbers. The issue of over-representation is still somewhat undecided, but the Republicans carved out districts “with surgical precision” using racist methods.
Courts have struck down the maps again and again since 2010 because they were unconstitutional. The GOP does a little shuck and jive, redraws the maps again in an unconstitutional manner, then submits the new unconstitutional maps hoping to get through another election with an unfair result. They cheat the system and hope to live through another election, keeping their unconstitutional gains from gerrymandering.
We are now in the middle of 2018 and there is still uncertainty about the districts because the GOP will NEVER draw a constitutional map willingly if it means that Democrats will be represented fairly.
So, yeah, Ebrun, there was gerrymandering prior to 2010, but after 2010, the state and the country have been dealing with a form of gerrymandering that has undone the will of the people as a result of powerful computer technology, new redistricting software and the availability of big data that takes the guesswork out of producing unconstitutional districts.
The problem with electing delegates to a constitutional convention is that there will be very low voter turnout enabling left wing advocacy groups to have inordinate influence on the entire process.
At least under out current constitution, voters get to decide in statewide general elections. Gerrymandering plays no role in statewide general elections. If the gerrymandered General Assembly proposes unpopular or unwise Constitutional amendments, voters statewide are free to reject them.
Statewide contests such as the races for governor, attorney general or senate, are immune from the effects of gerrymandering. The entire state votes on the same candidates.
But you miss the point of gerrymandering when you say the voters can vote out the legislature. Gerrymandering makes it very difficult for the majority to have an impact. The incumbents select who will have an opportunity to vote when they draw district boundaries.
The problem of gerrymandering is that you cannot get rid of an incumbent. If enough people dislike the candidate, the incumbent will draw the district boundaries to exclude those voters. The incumbent picks his voters. The voters do not select their representatives.