Other states are putting abortion on the ballot. Why won’t Republicans in NC? | Opinion
Come November, voters in Arizona and Missouri will decide whether to enshrine a presumptive right to abortion in their state constitutions.
According to a May CBS News poll, 65% of likely Arizona voters told pollsters they support the measure. A record number of signatures were gathered to place the issue on the ballot — the most in state history for a ballot initiative.
Similar proposals are already on the ballot in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota. In the two years since the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion rights supporters have prevailed in all seven other states where the issue was put before voters. Something of a pattern appears.
While 26 states allow ballot initiatives, North Carolina, sadly, doesn’t. But an abortion amendment could be placed on the ballot if referred by the General Assembly. State Sen. Rachel Hunt has attempted to do exactly that — filing the “Protect Women’s Healthcare” proposal (Senate Bill 909).
Republican leaders made sure it went nowhere. Even though they are perennial advocates of a wild and often silly array of state constitutional amendment offerings, they apparently don’t want to hear from Tar Heels on one of the most vital personal liberty questions to arise in North Carolina history.
I’m guessing they’re a little frightened by the gale that’s blowing. So much for the will of the people.
It’s not that N.C. Republicans don’t want to change the state constitution in November. Following the advice of election-denying Donald Trump lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, Republicans have already placed on the ballot a measure to alter the language of Art. VI, sec. 1 of the N.C. Constitution. It would say, if passed, “only a citizen of the United States who is 18 years of age” can vote in the state.
It wouldn’t change North Carolina’s constitutional and statutory requirements in any meaningful way. But it does follow the Republican political playbook — turning out the base by implying, falsely, that undocumented immigrants are voting in North Carolina elections. They aren’t. And won’t be. But better to throw up the fictitious specter than focus on women’s crucial, life-altering, reproductive freedoms.
Why pay attention to what’s real when you can dwell on the animosity-laced terrain of the fake? How Trumpian.
Republicans got surprising (and disappointing) levels of support from Democrats on the “citizens only” referral. I’m guessing many were reluctant to be beaten over the head in November for a provision that doesn’t actually do anything.
Jim Womack, president of the hilariously-named North Carolina Election Integrity Team, said Republican lawmakers would support the proposed constitutional change “simply because it’ll bring conservatives to the polls.” House Speaker Tim Moore put a little brighter gleam on it, saying: “I think as long as we get that and get that to the people to be able to vote on it, is very important.“
Sen. Brad Overcash, grandly, told his colleagues: “An opportunity before you today is to empower the people of North Carolina to amend their own constitution...” Sen. Buck Newton, a Republican from Wayne County, echoed Overcash, saying during a floor debate: “It’s only fair to the citizens of this state that we ensure that only citizens are allowed to vote in this state, and this bill gives them the opportunity to decide that for themselves.” You bet.
I’m certain that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, more North Carolinians would prefer to decide the crushingly concrete abortion issue for themselves than the imagined peril of non-citizen voting. Why not “empower” them?
Isn’t it “only fair they decide”? Or do our Republican leaders merely use the referendum system to distort the democratic process, not to assure it? I fear we know what the answer to that question is.