The evil symmetry of the 2013 session

Voter suppression proposal would be a fitting conclusion

It appears that we are in the final week of the 2013 legislative session and, as is frequently the case in such circumstances, the state budget debate has been dominating the discussion on Jones Street. By all indications, lawmakers will take up and pass the final two-year budget in the next couple of days and set the General Assembly on the road to adjournment.

Unfortunately, the budget is far from the only major piece of legislation that’s likely to be considered in the session’s waning hours. Indeed, lawmakers appear to be on the verge of a frenzy of activity that will, in the matter of a few short days, reshape North Carolina in numerous important ways for years to come. Barring something unforeseen, legislative leaders will ram through bills that: limit reproductive freedom of the state’s women, dramatically weaken environmental protections and make guns even easier to obtain and brandish.

A radical voter suppression proposal

But the coup de grâce to the 2013 session has to be a proposal that emerged just last night. As noted this morning on The Progressive Pulse blog, the proposal is breathtaking in its breadth and scope:

Veteran nonpartisan elections advocate Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina – the man who did more than any other independent advocate to bring down the corrupt former Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Black – summarized the proposal this way earlier this morning:

“The Senate leadership’s rewrite of H-589 is being taken up at 2 PM today in Legislative Office Building Room 544. It is breathtaking in scope and radical in purpose. It makes the most sweeping changes to the core parts of our state’s election process in decades. In 57 pages, it redefines and restricts who can vote, where, when and how, while also allowing more money to pour into our elections.

It seems fitting that the bill is being rammed through in the final days of the session. The substance and process of this legislation demonstrates a complete disrespect of honest voters. It authorizes vigilante partisan “observers” to roam through polling places and creates new barriers at every turn. The bill will drive more people away from the polling booth, either to not vote at all or to use the mail-in absentee process, which we already know if where most fraud occurs.

This is elitist politics at its worse – political bullies rigging the election process for their own narrow interests. We hope that other Senators and House members will bring the Senate leaders to their senses and stop this legislative madness.”

Hall might have added that, according to preliminary analyses, it is the most ambitious/regressive voter suppression effort in recent American history. If it is passed into law in its present form, the proposal will almost certainly give North Carolina the nation’s strictest election laws and turn back the clock by several decades.

Hall’s analysis also comes just a day after the release of another report panning a less-onerous voter ID proposal which showed that it could negatively impact up to 5% of the state’s voters.

An apt conclusion

Of course, in many respects, there’s a certain evil symmetry to the proposal and an aptness to its emergence in the waning hours of the 2013 session. For the past six months, conservative state leaders have been doing their worst to drag North Carolina back into the mid-20^th Century. In area after area, the General Assembly and Governor McCrory have been using banana republic tactics to enact radical, half-baked proposals cooked up in the “think tanks” funded by the state budget director that will erase decades of uneven and frequently painstaking progress.

Now, like thieves covering their tracks, they’re doing everything in their power (in every way they can imagine) to make sure they’re not caught or punished for their actions by limiting the opportunity of voters who might disapprove.

It is a sad and dark moment in state history. Let’s hope caring and thinking people act to reject this treacherous deed as forcefully and rapidly as possible.