NC Judge’s bid to toss votes is latest move in Republicans’ ‘politics of facade’ | Opinion
Republican Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin is apparently not satisfied with two recounts of his very close race with incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. Riggs remains more than 700 votes ahead with 5.5 million ballots cast. Griffin also now wants to disqualify a stunning 60,000 Tar-Heel voters who, as election law expert Bob Hall put it in his Dec. 6 editorial, “followed all the rules and were told their ballots counted.”
Hall did more than opine. He interviewed a dozen people from the list of voters Griffin wants to disenfranchise. Disabled veteran Lawrence McKenzie called the move “insulting,” saying he showed his military ID when he voted, and now Griffin’s asserting “my voice don’t count.”
Terri Burwell, who registered to vote in 2004 when she turned 21, has repeatedly voted and showed her ID to the poll worker when she voted this year, said Griffin’s claim “is ridiculous” and “hurtful,” adding “Throwing out my ballot would mean what I say doesn’t matter.”
Viola Alston of Henderson, who has cast ballots in 25 state and local elections over the last 20 years, said she couldn’t believe someone was trying to cancel her vote: “I’d be very unhappy . . . I want to vote in every election that comes around.”
Jefferson Griffin thinks his fanciful, already judicially-rejected, election-busting ideological claim counts more than the personal franchise of tens of thousands of Tar-Heel citizens. He also likely has a quiet confidence that the most partisan state supreme court in the United States — which he is anxious to join — will ignore the law and sweep him in. Though it now appears Democrats are trying to head this off in federal court.
In embracing the North Carolina Republican “politics of façade,” Griffin shows he shouldn’t become a justice.
We’re awfully familiar with “façade” politics in Carolina. When Republican lawmakers used “surgical precision” to disenfranchise Black voters with a “monster” voter ID bill, federal courts found the proffered interest in “ballot integrity” was mere ruse, since no evidence of voter fraud could be produced.
Non-existent transgender assaults were said to necessitate a humiliating bathroom bill and imaginary hordes of trans high-school athletes jeopardizing other students’ well-being demanded exclusion of the already marginalized.
In the 2010s, supposed concern for low-income working folks led to huge tax cuts for our wealthiest citizens and out-of-state corporations, while those at the bottom saw increases in regressive sales taxes and the brutal end of an earned income tax credit.
Vouchers to purportedly increase opportunity for poor kids to attend private schools, as public education funding was strangled, quickly led to the real prize — massive allocations for wealthy parents to send their children to discriminatory religious institutions.
Extreme partisan gerrymandering – crushing Tar Heel rights to equal political participation — was said to be required because “in North Carolina the legislature is the great and chief department of government and alone is created to express the will of the people” (Holmes v. Moore). Thus, we are assured only “free” not “fair” elections (Harper v. Hall).
And since the General Assembly’s “enactment of law is the sacrosanct fulfillment of the people’s will” it only makes sense that Republican lawmakers would bar a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion from being voted on by a strongly supportive citizenry. The “will of the people” doesn’t apply to core Republican issues.
Utterly specious justification takes one a long way in North Carolina Republican politics. The first Republican president Abraham Lincoln advised: “Tell the truth and you won’t have so much to remember.” They must have dropped that from the platform.