North Carolina Republican Senate leaders have introduced yet another proposal to restrict voting rights. No surprise there. They attack the right to vote like it’s their job. I’m guessing they think it is.
Senate Bill 747 will limit mail-in ballots. It’ll eliminate the three-day grace period for ballots postmarked by election day. That grace period was enacted unanimously in 2009. But this ain’t 2009. The Republican Party in North Carolina hadn’t yet concluded it was existentially opposed to democracy 14 years ago. Now they’re all in. I wonder what they tell their kids when it’s time for the pledge of allegiance.
Sen. Ralph Hise, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, revealed he’d fruitfully conferred, just days before it was introduced, with the remarkable Cleta Mitchell – Donald Trump’s election denial guru. She proclaimed recently there were some things she wanted to “fix” in NC election law. Like Mark Meadows, Mitchell was on Trump’s “perfect” call to the Georgia Secretary of State demanding he “find 11,780 votes”. I’m sure Mitchell knows election fraud when she sees it.
And SB 747 goes farther. It’ll make voters who use same-day registration cast a provisional ballot, increase absentee ballot hurdles, and prohibit election boards from using private donations to support training and administration. Of course, none of these barriers will inflict anything like the wound NC voters are about to receive from the next round of nation-leading partisan gerrymandering, but I was taken by a seeming change in tone of Republican explanations for the proposal.
Most of the massive alterations of North Carolina voting law enacted by Republican lawmakers over the last dozen years have been, the courts have explained, justified by lies. The “monster voter ID” law of 2013 was said to be aimed at voter fraud and ballot accuracy. But judges found that legislators “could not conceal the state’s true motivation” – the desire to handicap black voters. The gigantic racial gerrymanders invalidated during the same period weren’t crafted for the proffered reasons, but to “deny a constitutionally adequate voice in the state legislature” for Black Tar Heels. The 2015 overhaul of Wake County commission districts was rooted in “pretext” – the “sore loser law” was actually passed to crush Democrats.
But now Republicans at least come closer to admitting their overarching goal – denying the electoral rights of their enemies.
First, locking arms with Cleta Mitchell is something of a tell. It’s like saying they took civil rights guidance from the Proud Boys. Next, Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network colleague, long-time NC GOP leader Jim Womack, who also pressed for the changes, said openly: “there’s an argument that says it’s a good thing for conservatives if more people vote, I fundamentally disagree with that.” Sen. Hise himself explained, regretfully, that “shortening the early voting period is something (he) would very much support,” but “the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals” wouldn’t allow it. All seem to concede they’re out to limit the franchise. In America. In 2023. Who would have guessed a political party could (again) thrive in North Carolina as an opponent to democracy.
Franklin Roosevelt’s renomination acceptance speech in 1936 was one of the greatest ever delivered by an American president. He said:
“There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of others much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.’
“In America, we are waging a great and successful war. It is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.”
That we are. NC Republicans are on the other side.
Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2023
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us