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North Carolina Is the New Wisconsin
“Outsiders are coming in and they’re going to try to do to us what they did to Scott Walker in Wisconsin,” North Carolina Republican Governor Pat McCrory said yesterday, in response to the growing “Moral Monday” protest movement.
North Carolina is the new Wisconsin, but not for the reasons McCrory alleges. Like in Wisconsin, a homegrown grassroots resistance movement has emerged—and grown rapidly—to challenge the drastic right-wing agenda unveiled by Republicans in the state. Just like the Koch brothers backed Scott Walker, the Koch’s billionaire ally and close associate Art Pope funded North Carolina’s Republican takeover in 2010 and 2012. (Only McCrory went a step further and actually named Pope to his inner circle as deputy budget director.) And North Carolina, like Wisconsin, is “a state fight with national implications,” says Rev. William Barber of the North Carolina NAACP. Republicans have imported a slew of ALEC-inspired policies in an attempt to turn the New South back into the Old Confederacy.
In order to make it harder for opponents of these right-wing policies to challenge their sponsors, North Carolina Republicans have unloaded the kitchen sink of voter suppression. As I reported in April (“7 Ways North Carolina Republicans are Trying to Make it Harder to Vote”): “North Carolina Republicans have introduced a series of bills in the legislature that would require state-issued photo ID to cast a ballot, drastically cut early voting, eliminate same-day voter registration, end straight-ticket voting, penalize families of students who register to vote where they go to college, rescind the automatic restoration of voting rights for ex-felons, and ban “incompetent” voters from the polls. The legislation has been dubbed the ‘Screw the Voter Act of 2013’ and ‘The Longer Lines to Vote Bill.’ The goal is to make this racially integrated swing state a solidly red bastion for the next decade and beyond.”
Forty of 100 counties in North Carolina are subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, based on a history of voting discrimination, and must have their election changes approved by the federal government. But North Carolina Republicans, judging from the legislation introduced, are already acting as if the Supreme Court has struck down Section 5. If you want to know what a post–Section 5 world will resemble, without Section 5’s powerful deterrent and enforcement effect, look no further than what’s currently happening in the Tarheel state
North Carolina is the new Wisconsin, but not for the reasons McCrory alleges. Like in Wisconsin, a homegrown grassroots resistance movement has emerged—and grown rapidly—to challenge the drastic right-wing agenda unveiled by Republicans in the state. Just like the Koch brothers backed Scott Walker, the Koch’s billionaire ally and close associate Art Pope funded North Carolina’s Republican takeover in 2010 and 2012. (Only McCrory went a step further and actually named Pope to his inner circle as deputy budget director.) And North Carolina, like Wisconsin, is “a state fight with national implications,” says Rev. William Barber of the North Carolina NAACP. Republicans have imported a slew of ALEC-inspired policies in an attempt to turn the New South back into the Old Confederacy.
In order to make it harder for opponents of these right-wing policies to challenge their sponsors, North Carolina Republicans have unloaded the kitchen sink of voter suppression. As I reported in April (“7 Ways North Carolina Republicans are Trying to Make it Harder to Vote”): “North Carolina Republicans have introduced a series of bills in the legislature that would require state-issued photo ID to cast a ballot, drastically cut early voting, eliminate same-day voter registration, end straight-ticket voting, penalize families of students who register to vote where they go to college, rescind the automatic restoration of voting rights for ex-felons, and ban “incompetent” voters from the polls. The legislation has been dubbed the ‘Screw the Voter Act of 2013’ and ‘The Longer Lines to Vote Bill.’ The goal is to make this racially integrated swing state a solidly red bastion for the next decade and beyond.”
Forty of 100 counties in North Carolina are subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, based on a history of voting discrimination, and must have their election changes approved by the federal government. But North Carolina Republicans, judging from the legislation introduced, are already acting as if the Supreme Court has struck down Section 5. If you want to know what a post–Section 5 world will resemble, without Section 5’s powerful deterrent and enforcement effect, look no further than what’s currently happening in the Tarheel state
Read more: North Carolina Is the New Wisconsin | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/174761/north-carolina-new-wisconsin#ixzz2W3HDJOHV
Follow us: @thenation on Twitter | TheNationMagazine on Facebook
Whoa, ban incompetent voters from polls? What in the hell does that mean? Anyone with a D after their name? I think the Justice Department needs to monitor all of our elections from now on.
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