NORTH CAROLINA OPEN THREAD Sunday, September 18, 2022
382nd WEEKLY EDITION
This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue. We hope this weekly platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we take back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please join us every week. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads. If you are interested in starting your own state blog, weekly to occasionally, we will list your work below.
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POSTED COVID data 9/11/2022 1:00pm EDT North Carolina
Click here for Covid-19 data from Worldometer Real Time World Statistics.
Total Cases New Cases Total Deaths New Deaths Total Recovered Active
9/11 3,141,302 26,365 3,079,705 35,232
9/18 3,162,491 26,414 3,101,392 34,685
Track NC Covid Data Track NC Vaccine Data
Please jump the fold for links to recent stories and opinion.
N.C. Republicans base “independent state legislature” case on a fake
Digby’s Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan, 9/15/2022
Considering whoppers told by conservative nominees in recent Senate confirmations, is it any wonder North Carolina Republicans believe conservative justices will find “a 204-year-old lie” persuasive?
Representatives from the Brennan Center demolish N.C. Speaker Tim Moore’s (R) argument for the “independent state legislature theory” (Politico):
This fall, the court will hear Moore v. Harper, an audacious bid by Republican legislators in North Carolina to free themselves from their own state constitution’s restrictions on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. The suit also serves as a vehicle for would-be election subverters promoting the so-called “independent state legislature theory” — the notion that state legislators have virtually absolute authority over federal elections — which was used as part of an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The North Carolina legislators’ case relies in part on a piece of paper from 1818. But there’s a problem: The document they quote in their brief is a well-known fake.
Peer back into U.S. history (some most regrettable) and names from South Carolina appear regularly: John C. Calhoun, Charles Pinckney, Preston Brooks, Strom Thurmond. Lindsey Graham is destined to join them.
Pinckney’s name is attached to the fake in question, a document he submitted in 1818 that, scholars surmise, was Pinckney’s attempt to sell history on the notion that he was the true father of the Constitution. James Madison responded at the time with a “detailed refutation of Pinckney’s document along with the rest of his copious notes from the Convention. It was the genteel, 19th-century equivalent of calling BS.”
For over a century, the document, says “a modern-day researcher,” is “probably the most intractable constitutional con in history.”
North Carolina's progress on criminal justice at stake in high court election
Facing South, Billy Corriher, 9/15/2022
The North Carolina Supreme Court has broken new ground in protecting the rights of criminal defendants in recent years, even as other Southern courts have backtracked. North Carolina's high court, which has a 4-3 Democratic majority, has ruled along party lines to limit long sentences for juvenile offenders and cracked down on the longstanding problem of racism in jury selection.
But that progress could come to a halt next year, depending on the outcome of this year's high court election.
Two Democratic seats are on the ballot in November, and a national Republican group has pledged to spend millions of dollars to help flip at least one of those seats, which would give Republicans a majority. Court of Appeals Judges Richard Dietz and Lucy Inman are the Republican and Democratic candidates, respectively, for one seat. Justice Sam Ervin, an incumbent Democrat, is running for reelection against Republican Trey Allen, a former clerk to conservative Chief Justice Paul Newby.
Information can’t keep up with misinformation about NC voting machines
NC Policy Watch, Lynn Bonner, 9/15/2022
Commissioners’ meetings in Surry County are a showcase of election conspiracy theories where distrust of the machines that count ballots plays a starring role.
The northwestern North Carolina county on the Virginia border is probably best known as the home of Mount Airy, the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry in his eponymous television show from the 1960s. This year, Surry County has been a stop on the circuit for prominent election deniers who falsely maintain that votes were engineered to have President Joe Biden win in 2020.
The county devoted nearly an entire May meeting to election deniers that featured David Clements, a former assistant professor at New Mexico State University who travels the country preaching about fraud. Clements, who lost his university job last year because he refused to wear a mask in class, urged Surry to hand-count ballots.
At the meeting’s end, Surry board Chairman Bill Goins told the crowd that commissioners were reviewing residents’ recommendations, but concerns about fraud should go to the local and state boards of elections. Someone in the crowd yelled “Pontius Pilate.”
Increase Voting Access and make polling places safe for voters and workers
BlueNC, WRAL, 9/18/2022
When it comes to keeping voting in North Carolina accessible and secure the state’s Republicans seem to be saying one thing and then doing another. They say they want voting accessible, the rules and procedures open and transparent and polling places to be secure. But then they block regulations and file lawsuits that limit voters’ opportunities to cast ballots and would actually make polling places less secure. Rather than acting to give voters more faith in the electoral process, these actions breed confusion and mistrust.
These contradictions vividly came into focus recently – first at a non-partisan session of the N.C. Trusted Elections tour in Smithfield and a few days later in a lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court by the state and national Republican parties.
What is achieved by a baseless legal action that actually seeks to breed distrust and plant doubts about the conduct of the election? What is achieved is a continuation of the dangerous false narrative that Trump created to explain his defeat, in an effort to inspire harassment and belligerence targeting poll workers and minority voters. They should be ashamed, but they don't have the capacity.
HOW RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM HAS SHAPED NC AND ITS POLITICS
BlueNC, Charlotte Observer, 9/16/2022
North Carolina has 28 hate groups monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — a relatively high number per capita, but not as striking as the disproportionate number in sparsely populated, largely rural states like Wyoming and New Hampshire. Some politicians in North Carolina are tied to extremism directly.
5 ACTIONS TO TAKE NOW FOR OUR KIDS, TEACHERS, AND SCHOOLS
BlueNC, WRAL, 9/16/2022
End the Teacher Pay Penalty: Raise base teacher pay by 24.5% -- That is the difference when you compare teacher salaries to non-teacher college graduates (EPI, 2022). We should address this immediately to support current and future teachers. For a beginning teacher, this would increase pay from $37,000 to $46,065. It would move NC from being in the bottom 10 to the top 20 states in terms of beginning teacher pay.
Thank you for reading and contributing, I hope you have a good week.
