Updated 4:22 p.m.: Advocates of election suppression were dealt two small blows Tuesday, showing that even in North Carolina, there may be a limit to how far you can go to make it hard for people to participate.
The Republican-led state Board of Elections voted unanimously earlier this afternoon to allow Elizabeth City State University student Montravias King to run for the city council there, the Associated Press and WCNC's Jeremy Markovich report. The Pasquotank County Board of Elections, also led by Repubicans, had blocked King from running, saying that he couldn't use his campus address to establish residency.
Later, at the same state board of elections meeting today, the two Republicans on the Watauga County Board of Elections said they would undo their decision to combine three Election Day precincts into one, a move that had eliminated a precinct on the Appalachian State University campus.
The state board, however, did allow Watauga to eliminate the early voting site on campus.
We've written about the cases here and here.
The unanimous ruling on the King case was the right one. King had been registered to vote since coming to college in 2009, and the state board seemed to have clear guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Symm v. United States that the government can't deny or discourage residency to students.
In Watauga County, here's the stat you need to know: The App State precinct had the highest early voting turnout in the county in 2009 and 2011, according to Watauga BOE member Kathleen Campbell, the lone Democrat on that county's board. The precinct also trended Democrat, which was why Republicans had targeted it.
North Carolinians are still left with what some feel is one of the country's most restrictive voting laws. But for the most part today, N.C. officials decided it's better to have more people, not fewer, taking part in elections.
Peter St. Onge
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Not a good day for election suppression
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24 comments:
Good thing the teaser is worded the way it is, or folks would not have the wrong idea, if they decided to actually read the story.
Pete,
How many times are you going to regurgitate this story?
It's a non-issue.
Students should be required to vote where their lawful, legal residence is.
That goes for all students in the US.
Students like other Democrats get to vote at least twice. They vote in their home district when they request absentee ballots and they register and vote in the county they attend school.
The Observer likes that so they continue printing this bull often. Few readers will see and it and even less will care.
They are doing all they can do to show their 100% bias toward the left wing. That's why no one buys that rag of a paper and this is more than likely the only article I will read online in it.
I have never known a student to vote twice - it's hard enough to get them to vote once. Your fantasies about a state taken over by illegals, irresponsible students committing voter fraud, etc. are really getting the better of your common sense. Absentee ballots have a much higher rate of fraud.
I have three sons. All three registered to vote here in Charlotte when they turned 18. While in college they voted by absentee ballot. Once they got out of college and got jobs they registered to vote in their new states and filled out cards stating that they were no longer residents of NC. The oldest left NC in 2000, the middle one in 2005, and the youngest in 2007, and all three have been voting in their new states ever since. However two of them are still on the voter rolls in Mecklenburg County. I see their names in the registration book every time I go to vote. We have tried repeatedly to get them off the rolls but so far to no avail. I assume that they could send in absentee ballots for voting here or else come visit on election day and vote in person while still voting in their current states.
Wow! "Election suppression", huh?
Candidate restrictions and redesign of districts is now election suppression? I suppose it's useful to come up with some term that at least sounds like vote suppression in order to move forward the canard that Republicans want to disenfranchise legitimate voters, but this one is a stretch.
No one is trying to suppress elections. Pretty much by definition, the only way to do that is to eliminate an elective office or increase the length of terms. There can be only one reason to have used that nonsense term: to find a means to use the word suppression so as to increase the drumbeat about "voter suppression".
I realize that you're writing a polemic, not a news story or analysis, but it is hardly artful to tread so heavily on the language that you agenda screams out from the page.
My son is registered in DC, Charlotte and NYC. I doubt he votes more than once - he tends Republican - but he could.
"Frankly", this author has run this topic into the ground to the point where he had to come back and edit it as the original version didn't contain enough criticism to meet quota.
Another great day for NC, love the rhetoric, it is getting pretty pathetic...
It comes down to domicile.
If King has established his legal reidence in NC, has his driver's license registered in NC, pays taxes in Nc and has no residency ties anywhere else, then he has every right to run for council.
To me, the problem comes with students who are using their dorm or apartment address to register in NC yet are from another state and claimed as a dependent by their parents.
Do not be fooled, the republicans will keep trying to stymie the vote especially in precincts that they think will vote democratic or even districts that has the possibility to go either way!!!
They are still living in the plantations days and they think they own the plantations!!!
"Do not be fooled," no matter how hard we try to clean up the voter fraud, there will still be democrats that will vote as often as they can. They will also register using a dead person's name or Mickey Mouse. This is the Chicago way.
More one sided fear mongering from the Charlotte Democrat Observer.The Republicans are enacting all these new voting laws not because they want to secure a legitimate voting process but because they want to suppress the vote. Bla Bla Bla.
During the evidence and testimony phase of the Indiana voter ID case before the Supreme Court the opponents could not produce a single piece of evidence of anyone who had ever been denied the ability or right to vote because of voter ID. They lost.The percentage of minority voting in the over 30 states that have voter ID is greater than that in the states which don't. A higher percentage of minorities vote in Mississippi than in self righteous places like Massachusetts.
But we have the Observer continuing to print one sided stories. While the left can produce no one whose voting rights have been denied the Executive Director of the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina, Jay DeLancy, has these statistics on voter problems:
* There are thousands of 112 year old voters in several counties.
* There are 3 counties with more than 100% of their voting age population registered to vote.
* In the last election 130 people voted in an election and than evaded jury duty by claiming non U.S. citizen status.
* In a search of 30,000 deceased voters it was discovered that five voted in both North Carolina and Florida
* In Asheville there are still 64 SDR (Same day registration) voters who can not be verified. These votes counted.
* Actual people have been caught trying to vote two and three times and having to read their "addresses" off of pieces of paper because they didn't know where they "lived".
Democrat media like the Charlotte Observer is not interested in printing contrary facts from people like Jay DeLancy even to debunk them if they can. So where is he forced to print them?...The Wall Street Journal. Delancy commented to the WSJ that this is only the start to cleaning up a corrupt voter election system "that was refined under 100 years of one party rule."
Question for the Observer Editorial Board:Which is the bigger breech of Voting rights and threat to democracy....Voter ID as enacted in over 30 states, most foreign democracies and supported by a large majority of Americans? Or Bev Perdue's proposal in 2011 that we suspend elections for two years so the Democrats can work on stimulating the economy unencumbered by anxiety about what the pesky voters think?
The left thinks they know best and that democracy is often a hindrance to doing "the right things". It is part of their authoritarian instinct.
Sorry Carol, but the word Stymie has been judged as not appropriate by the thought police.
And thanks for telling us phrases right out of the liberal play book.
Liberals always suspect foul play and ulterior motives behind any policy that does not agree with their ideology. This is due to the technique they employ to advance their agenda.
As Alinsky put it, "An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent. He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises."
"The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. When those prominent in the status quo turn and label you an 'agitator' they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function—to agitate to the point of conflict".
"The organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems,and organizations must be based on many issues. The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression (Moron Mondays). He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act."
It is perfectly clear as to the modus operandi of the Observer Editorial Board, to agitate. Don't try to confuse the issue with facts. This serves no good for the cause, because facts are what diminishes the controversy.
How controversial is the subject line to this oped, "Not a good day for election suppression". People who believe in the integrity of the vote are labelled as election suppressors! The content of the story does nothing for the lefts crusade against voter ID laws, although you would think by the subject that it did. The article ends with "N.C. officials decided it's better to have more people, not fewer, taking part in elections." This would lead you to believe that the current N.C. Voter Laws are disenfranchising people when it is a fact it produces more minority voters, as is the case in Georgia. It is also a fact that there have been abuses to the system such as Melowese Richardson who is serving time for voter fraud in Cincinnati.
Taylor Batten would have us forget the prologue to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
CharlotteObserver said...
Sorry Carol, but the word Stymie has been judged as not appropriate by the thought police.
And thanks for telling us phrases right out of the liberal play book.
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The so called "thought police" you are talking about are the republicans who will lie and sue their own mothers to get control of the estate when their fathers die.
I have seen that more than once and it goes on all the time.
Even in here in NC a woman many years ago had to sue to get her share of the estate in a divorce and had to prove she contributed as much as her husband to build the estate!!
This state is getting to as backward as Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana and South Carolina.
Republicans want to be dictators and every thing they is to try to take away the rights of all but the richest who own them and make them SIGN PLEDGES TO DO AS THEY ARE TOLD WHICH IN THE PRESENT CONGRESS THERE HAVE BEEN 283 SIGN A PLEDGE TO VOTE AS THEY ARE TOLD---
Do you think they were bribed by money or threats or both??????
Do you believe it is fine for republicans to take bribes to sign pledges??
Pete, Two of us have commented on this blog that our children are still registered to vote in Meck County despite the fact that they have been voting in other states for several years. Obviously there must be others (probably many others) in the same situation. Does this concern you and the editorial board at all? Have you considered passing this information on to a reporter to do a bit of investigating? If this doesn't concern you could you please explain why. Thanks!
misswhit said...
Pete, Two of us have commented on this blog that our children are still registered to vote in Meck County despite the fact that they have been voting in other states for several years. Obviously there must be others (probably many others) in the same situation. Does this concern you and the editorial board at all? Have you considered passing this information on to a reporter to do a bit of investigating? If this doesn't concern you could you please explain why. Thanks!
So you think that you child, would vote in the state where he or she is attending college or working or whatever, would vote there and then hop a plane or maybe even drive to when you are and vote again??
That tells me a lot about how he was raised and the character he or she has.
Do encourage such a thing if it possible for him or her to have time to vote and get on a plane or to drive, ?miles to vote again. Was he or she brought up to do such things? Have you ever lied to your child or told lies or cheated and they knew about it??
I am going out on a limb and say they have not done or even seriously thought about it, and doubt if if has ever crossed their minds or it did it was a passing moment they dismissed immediately!!
Pledges to democrats are horrid, why that means you promise to actually do something for all that money.
Ms Whit: I did notice the observer recently ran a story about Gov. Pat McCrory using the word Frankly. I hope you will realize that they are so busy and maybe when the democrats get back in power will have time to get to your suggestion.
Carol Justus, You probably are deliberately being obtuse about my concern over someone being registered here and in another state. For the record I am not concerned about my children double voting. While they were in college they voted by an absentee ballot from their home state (NC) where they were registered. Once they graduated they established residency in the states where they work and that is where they have been voting. Yet two of them are still on NC rolls despite the fact that they filled out cards stating they were no longer NC residents. So it is in theory possible they could still continue to vote by absentee ballot. Someone else on this blog also reported his child continued to be registered here despite living and voting in another state. It's wrong to be concerned about this? Is it okay to have inaccurate voter rolls? And why does it make you so angry when someone seeks clarification on whether or not this is a problem?
And elsewhere we read that NC is considering the radical notion of ditching its state income tax to become one of a few high performing states without one. Forbes, Drudge, that other Drudge-like state site which goes unmentioned out of fear that this won't get published. Yes, everywhere but the CO which must not consider it as newsworthy as playing small ball with its political enemies. Same as it always was. Too bad.
CharlotteObserver said...
Pledges to democrats are horrid, why that means you promise to actually do something for all that money.
Republicans do not have a problem with ethics when they sell their soul to some billionaire to futher their bank accounts.
When you are intimidated or bribed to sign a pledge to do as some tells you, you have sold your soul and ability to make a decision and should be prosecuted!~!
How much is your soul worth???
There is not enough money in the world for me to sell my ability to make my own decisions.
Yes Carol we can see you think for yourself over and over and over and over just like a great little Democrat.
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