Voter frauds

by | Aug 18, 2016 | Editor's Blog, NC Politics | 5 comments

The past few weeks have made it clear that the only people threatening the integrity of elections in North Carolina are the Trumpists leading the Republican party. First, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals showed that the voter suppression law passed in 2013 clearly targeted African-Americans. Now, the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party has sent a memo to Republican election board members urging them to curtail early voting.

The court showed that legislators requested research on the voting habits of African-Americans before crafting their law. Republicans and their allies call it the “voter ID” law, but it was not voter ID. It was discrimination. Instead of crafting a law that focused on voter ID, they wrote one that limited access to the polls, reversing reforms that had increased voter turnout substantially in the state.

Sunday, NCGOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse sent out an email to GOP appointees to county boards of elections urging them to limit early voting by making “party line” changes. Clearly, Republicans are trying to rig the election rules in their favor by making voting more difficult. Since election board members are charged with making sure elections are fair, Woodhouse’s appeal is particularly distasteful.

In the 1960s, the federal government threatened to send troops to Southern states to ensure African-Americans would have the right to vote. Those days seem long gone but clearly there still are people willing to curtail voting rights in order to hold onto power. We might not have federal troops coming into the state but we may well have elections overseen by the federal courts.

Republicans who claim that we’re better off with less federal intervention in state affairs need to first show that they can govern responsibly. The past four years with the GOP at the helm of North Carolina state government has shown the opposite. Whether for political reasons or misguided ideology, Republican elected officials have eagerly sought to restrict the rights of minorities. That’s no way to govern and it’s contrary to values that used to guide our state and made North Carolina a beacon of progress in the South.

5 Comments

  1. Jay Ligon

    Why is Woodhouse not being held in contempt? The 4th Circuit issued an order. Woodhouse issued instructions which defy the order of the court. Flouting a court’s explicit ruling is contempt of court, isn’t it? Or am I missing something?

  2. Charles Hogan

    About time for a Constitutional 14th amendment section 2 response to Republican voter suppression …

    Section 2: This section is laying out the guidelines for the number of people to represent each state in the federal political arenas. It talks bout how the number of representatives is chosen (essential the number is chosen to give equal representation based on the number of eligible resident of that state)

    under Article 1, section 2 of the Constitution:

    Representatives…….shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. (note; 3/5 of all other persons meant slaves).

    changed by the 14th to:

    Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.
    (so former slaves were now counted as 1 person instead of 3/5)

    The rest of section 2 sets up a “punishment” for any State which attempts to deny a freed slave who is at least 21 (the age you could vote) the right TO vote by saying “if you don’t let that guy vote, he doesn’t count as a person in the process of determining the number of Representatives you get in the House of Representatives.” In other words – deny freed slaves the right to vote and you lose Reps in Congress.

    A State COULD still deny a person the right to vote based on crimes or participation in rebellion.

    All of this, of course, refers only to males as women still couldn’t vote.

  3. Troy

    My, my, what a short and selective memory Rudy has. I remember a particularly nasty terrorist event prior to the Clinton and Obama watch; September 11, 2001. There are others before and after. But that one event seems to be the cement holding the entire “…or else the terrorists win” argument.

    It happened on Rudy’s watch, with Republicans in control of the White House. All those that died that day and in the years thereafter pursuing a failed strategy based on lies and false intelligence…and the Republican party has kept us safe.

    Lest we forget.

  4. Anne

    In Watauga County, the GOP BOE members adjourned without approving ANY voting plan – apparently in the hopes that this would force the county to revert to the “default plan” – using only the courthouse for early voting. Though they repeatedly repeated the “fear” of voter fraud happening apparently only at one location within the county (Appalachian State’s student union), the Republican BOE members were never able to provide compelling evidence for widespread voter fraud taking place in Watauga. Nor did they provide any plans to prevent buffer zone violations (apparently the big fraud witnessed by Republican activists) at the student union – or at any of the voting sites.

    What IS clear: the Watauga County Republicans absolutely want to make it harder for local residents (college students included) to vote.

    It is truly appalling that one party would work so hard and spend so many tax dollars defending the right to suppress the vote of key populations.

  5. TbeT

    Amen.
    What Woodhouse and some of his GOP minions in some counties are trying to do is vexing, sad, and embarrassing.
    In news coverage, Woodhouse himself admits it’s just partisan politics. But that claim has the same ring to it as The Godfather’s Michael Corleone explaining that “It’s just business” to justify committing immoral acts.

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