FRAIDY CATS, FRAIDY CATS!
by Cash Michaels
Here we go again.
Just when you thought Republicans might be through screwing around with voting in North Carolina, they prove us wrong by once again proposing to shorten the early voting period across the state right before the next election. They claim there are good reasons why this is necessary, like cost-cutting and having enough personnel.
But those of us who’ve lived here for a while, know the real deal.
NC Republicans have never given up trying to cheat the rules, no matter what the courts, or the polls say.
According to Pew Research in July 2024 (before the last presidential election):
62% of Republicans and Republican leaners said [early voting, mail-in balloting, absentee balloting] should only be available to those who have a documented reason for not voting in person on Election Day.
82% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say early or absentee voting should be available to any voter without the need for an excuse.
Republicans just don’t want voting to be easy, or fair, for Democrats.
And Lord knows that is especially true for this November’s midterm elections, when Dems are projected to wipe the floor with the GOP from the halls of Congress to the seats in our legislature.
LET’S BE FRANK ALERT! LET’S BE FRANK ALERT!
It was just ten years ago when a federal court ruled that the Republican-led NC General Assembly’s 2013 voter photo ID law was racially discriminatory and “..targeted Black voters with almost surgical precision.”
And it was back in 2021 when the NC Democratic Party chairperson at the time, Bobbie Richardson, did not spare the rod about what the court testimony she heard revealed about Republican partisan redistricting.
“The evidence presented demonstrates that Republicans lied to their colleagues when they promised a fair and transparent redistricting process. They cheated by using secret maps and closed door strategy sessions, then destroyed the maps they used,” Richardson recalled.
But despite that testimony, those GOP-generated maps were approved, and used for the 2022 midterms.
Years of evidence from before the 2022 midterms and since, shows that whether its redistricting or voter ID, the GOP will stop at nothing to steal an election. The way Republicans here, and across the country, have always chosen to cripple Democratic voters is to take aim at the most loyal base of the Democratic Party.
Writer Bill Yeomans for the Alliance for Justice said it best in April, 2020:
“A central tenet of Republican politics for decades… has been to win elections by making it difficult for their opponents to vote — more specifically, by blocking minority access to the ballot. Through enactment of laws that disproportionately burden minority voters (e.g., laws requiring photo identification, restricting early voting, limiting registration opportunities, and purging voter rolls), Republicans have carved out of the electorate the parts that don’t support them.”
Bill also forgot racial gerrymandering disguised as partisan gerrymandering, but he’s not wrong.
TRANSLATION - Republicans have historically tried to make voting difficult in North Carolina and other states for folks who look just like me!
Why? Because despite perennial disappointments and the way it tends to consistently fail the Black community, the Democratic Party still attracts at least 90-93% of our vote, especially from Black women.
That party loyalty, and love of early voting because of the flexibility of banking our ballots days in advance of Election Day, is seen as a major threat to Republicans. So for them, whatever it takes!
Enough of us continue to vote “D” instead of “R” in election after election because we believe that we are in the best position to wake the party up one day to finally address our issues. Simply put, there are more Black Democratic elected officials than there are elected Black Republicans, even after the conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court’s recent disastrous Louisiana Voting Rights Act decision a few weeks ago that could cost us plenty in Black congressional and legislative representation (In a surprise move Tuesday, the Republican-led South Carolina Senate voted NOT to redraw its one majority-minority Black voting district, thus saving longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn’s political bacon, for now. Many SC Republicans were actually rushing to redraw lines while primary early voting had already gotten underway! How damn greedy was that?).
Also on Tuesday, a federal three-judge panel stopped Alabama from using a new redistricting map that would not only give Republicans an unfair advantage in congressional races in the upcoming midterms, but “intentionally discriminated based on race” by drawing only one Black- majority district, not the two that legitimately existed before.
Oh yes, Democrats have frequently proven themselves to be the Keystone Cops of politics on many an occasion (as proven by that clumsy release of the DNC 2024 election autopsy report), but guess what? As negligent as they can be, I don’t see Democrats, as a party, actively trying to hurt me or my family like Republicans have proven to be infamous for.
I don’t see Democrats sinisterly trying to take my right to vote away; or threatening to send federal troops or ICE agents to voting precincts in Black communities to intimidate voters; or seizing the cast ballots of people of color in an effort to substantiate baseless accusations of cheating; or sending GOP operatives to polls in Black neighborhoods to intimate voters on Election Day so they will leave long voting lines in frustration; or sending out so-called “ballot-security” postcards to Black Democrats falsely warning them that they may face criminal charges if they’re caught voting in the wrong precinct; or actually sending out fliers throughout the Black community, or making robo-calls, deliberately giving Black voters the wrong information about Election Day, hoping that enough people who don’t always pay attention, will get confused and not vote at all.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
And of course, I would never vote for a political party that was the home of the infamous Jesse Helms and his racist “white hands” ad he ran against Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in the 1990 US Senate race, or today, in the age of Trump, has a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky named Andy Barr, who last week won his Republican primary with a campaign ad that had him looking directly into the camera and declaring, “It’s not a sin to be white…”
Something profoundly evil about a political party that allows racial campaigning and messaging like that today, let alone ever. So I can’t see myself stepping foot anywhere near voting for a Republican.
Simply put, Republicans, unlike Democrats today, are masters of racial politics, and have always targeted the loyal base of the Democratic Party with all sorts of unsavory shenanigans around election time, because Republicans, quite frankly, are afraid to honestly compete for the Black vote.
Fraidy cat Republicans who are scared to come into the Black community and put their ideas for a better, more universally prosperous America to the test.
HELL NO, I don’t want anything to do with the Republican Party, especially now that, but for a handful, they’re willingly licking the boots of a confirmed criminal racist-in-chief who is using them like cheap checkers from a five-and dime store.
As UNC Law Professor Gene Nichols, a man I deeply admire and respect, recently wrote about the NC Republican Party "not escaping their racial agenda" in the News and Observer op-ed: "I’m not sure much could be more horrifying than to take instruction on racial justice from the present president of the United States."
But to be clear, Republicans have been targeting Black Democratic voters long before Donald Trump came on the political scene, with all sorts of voter suppression schemes here in North Carolina, including taking away early voting on Sundays in order to stop “Souls to the Polls” balloting, where Black churches would load up their church vans right after services, and take properly registered congregants to the nearest early voting site to cast their ballots.
Back in the day, Republicans had the nerve and gall to say that all voters should only be in church on Sundays worshipping the Lord. When enough folks cussed those ignorant GOP lawmakers out (Black churchgoers always voted after service, NOT during, Einstein), then Republicans came back with it was too expensive for county election boards to have early voting sites open seven days a week, and gave those local boards permission to close on Sundays.
That scam has worked in some counties.
But now there’s the prospect of House Bill 66, sponsored by 22-year-old Republican Rep. Wyatt Gable of Onslow County, which if it becomes law, would immediately cut the current 17-day early voting period to just 13.
HB 66 states:
“Not earlier than the second Monday before an election in which a voter seeks to vote and not later than 3:00 P.M. on the last Saturday before that election (which would be Monday, October 19 to Saturday, October 31st), the voter may appear in person only at the office of the county board of elections….,” is the language of the proposed state House legislation. “A county board of elections shall conduct early voting on the last Saturday before the election from 8:00 A.M. until 3:00 P.M."
That bill, if made law, would automatically cut out one Sunday as an early voting option, giving folks only thirteen days of early balloting.
Then there’s Sen. Warren Daniel’s Senate Bill 1084, which if ratified, states:
“Not earlier than the second Thursday (October 22) before an election in which a voter seeks to vote and not later than 3:00 P.M. on the last Saturday (October 31) before that election, the voter may appear in person only at the office of the county board. A county board shall conduct early voting on the last Saturday before the election from 8:00 A.M. until 3:00 P.M."
He’d give us just ten days to cast our early ballots, with at least one Sunday for Souls to the Polls balloting.
Black Democrats like Sen. Natalie Murdock of Durham, said of Republican efforts to cripple Democratic early voting, “It is clear that if they don’t think folks are going to vote for them, they want to make it more difficult for them to vote.”
Of course, Republican legislative leaders like Sen. Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall are all for messing with Democratic voting as much as possible, especially for this midterm election.
But again, like his young colleague in the House, Sen. Daniel wants all of this to impact our upcoming early voting period for the November midterms. Which is odd, considering that in 2024 after years of not doing so, Trump and the GOP actually encouraged their voters, after seeing Democrats’ early voting success, to bank their votes early as well. Of the 4,223,734 total early votes cast statewide (5.7 million North Carolinians voted overall) that election, the NC GOP change in strategy garnered over 62,000 more early voters than Democrats.
As writer Ed Kilgore put it in his June 2023 piece for The Intelligencer:
“The idea is to exploit convenience voting wherever Republicans can’t stop it or roll it back. This two-track strategy is striking; GOP politicians are still treating anything other than in-person Election Day voting as corrupt, while urging their party and their voters to eagerly adopt those same allegedly corrupt practices for their own benefit.”
The GOP are truly a bunch of evil wusses, I’m telling you.
Instead of winning with the strength of their ideas, they prefer winning with the stench of their schemes.
Whether it’s messing with redistricting voting lines to make sure that mostly Democratic-leaning Black voters are drawn out of competitive districts (take what Republicans have done to Don Davis’ First Congressional District, for example); or making voter photo ID mandatory, insisting that the level of voter “fraud” was intolerable (if one or two out of over 5 million voters is “intolerable,” then so is my sunny bleached-blonde hair).
But as I said, it really is a shame and a disgrace that Republicans feel they have to resort to tricks and voter suppression, instead of an honest debate of the issues, to win elections.
How do we answer their shenanigans?
By voting our -sses off come this November!!! That’s how!
Get registered, double-check that registration, and then VOTE!
Any questions?!!!
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