NC APPELLATE COURT
RULING SAYS EX-FELONS MAY
VOTE IN NOV. MIDTERMS
By Cash Michaels
An election analysis
It is the one court ruling North Carolina Republicans dreaded to hear.
Approximately 56,000 ex-felons statewide are now, as of July 27th, eligible to register to vote, says the NC Court of Appeals and NC Board of Elections, starting with this November’s midterm elections. That means a 1973 law that essentially made ex-felons jump through a lot of unnecessary hoops to return to citizenship with all of their rights intact, is for now, null and void.
So whether an ex-felon is on parole, probation, or post-release supervision, as long as there is no longer an active prison sentence to be served, is at least 18 years old, has resided in North Carolina for a minimum of 30 days before the election, and is a U.S. citizen, he can now run down to the local board of elections and sign up to vote.
Why are Republicans not pleased with this ruling? Because the very last thing they want is more Black and Hispanic people able to vote across the state, especially after doing everything else from redistricting to passing voter ID laws to limit who can vote, who can’t and how many.
Blacks are 21% of North Carolina’s population, but reportedly 42% of the 56,000 ex-felons now able to register to vote.
Those 56,000 can now join North Carolina’s 7.3 million other registered voters in casting their ballots, providing margins for possible Democratic victories Republicans had not counted during this contentious midterm season. The races up for grabs include for the U.S. Senate and the State Supreme Court, in addition to the NC legislature and congressional seats.
The GOP argued for upholding a 1973 law that Democrats now say disenfranchised ex-felons by forcing them to earn their rights of citizenship back upon fulfilling certain requirements at the end of their prison sentences.
Republicans argued that that 1973 law was proper and constitutional.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that law was racist.
Interestingly, the Democrat-led NC Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case upon GOP appeal, even though the Appellate Court ruling seems pretty ironclad. No date had been set at presstime.
It all started when a Superior Court judicial panel struck down the 1973 law last March per a lawsuit, ruling that it violated the North Carolina Constitution because it discriminated against African-Americans.
But the state Appellate Court then stepped in and prevented ex-felons from registering to vote until July 27th.
Last Wednesday, during a “Unlock Our Vote” celebration near the state legislature, ex-felons were urged to immediately register to vote so they could be now heard.
“Now these votes must be registered and utilized,” Bishop William Barber, founder of Repairers of the Breach, and co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign, told the crowd. “They must be registered and counted. We’ve got power to change North Carolina. And we intend to use all the power that GOD has given us.”
Meanwhile last week, the NC Supreme Court, by a 4-3 ruling, agreed to speed up proceedings dealing the Common Cause lawsuit against legislative redistricting maps ratified last February.
Oral arguments begin in early to mid-October.
-30-
MONKEYPOX: IS IT STIGMATIZING
BLACKS; AND COVID-19 ORANGE
ZONE IN MORE THAN 60 COUNTIES
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Catch COVID-19, and few people would know beyond an excessive cough and flu-like conditions.
But be infected with the monkeypox virus, and everyone would soon know, because an intrusive rash of ugly, pronounced skin bumps would appear across one’s body, including hands and face.
Thus, the stigma of contracting monkeypox, a virus not easy to catch in terms of one’s behavior, but yet it is virulent, and can be contracted from clothing, surfaces or even bed sheets an infected person has come in contact with.
No one wants to catch monkeypox, and no one wants to be thought of as having monkeypox, but the current numbers from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that for some groups, that could very well be a possiblity.
According to the CDC, communities of color in the U.S. are bearing the brunt of the monkeypox infection nationally.
As of July 29th, of the more than 5,189 cases reported in the U.S., Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately infected by monkeypox.
African-Americans make up 27% of the known cases, while Hispanics comprise 31%., despite being just 13% and 19% respectively of the American population.
Whites, on the other hand, are 59% of the U.S. population, but just 37% of the nation’s monkeypox cases.
As many researchers have noted, the monkeypox epidemiology is almost the same as the spread of coronavirus.
With these numbers, the question becomes is public health able to provide the kind of immediate access needed for those infected through testing and vaccination?
To further add to the stigma of the disease, CDC says 99% of monkeypox patients are “of the male sex at birth” who contracted the virus during close, skin-to-skin sexual contact.
To be clear, presently monkeypox is considered a “rare and mild virus with a low infection rate” that can be caught by anyone. It comes with a fever, and the infection can last approximately four weeks.
It is not a “gay” or sexually transmitted disease, doctors maintain; is prevalent in over 78 countries; and anyone with a weakened immune system is especially susceptible.
Here in North Carolina, as of August 1, there were 53 cases of monkeypox, according to the CDC, compared to Georgia which had 351, and New York with a shocking 1,345.
As of July 25th, after the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), Mecklenburg County reported 12 cases, which at the time accounted for virtually half of North Carolina’s 27 known cases at the time.
The NC Dept. of Health and Human Services assures North Carolinians that it has devised a plan - in English and Spanish - “…to provide a quick and easily accessible summary of the information and tools North Carolinians need.” NCDHHS has also expanded monkeypox vaccine eligibility to prevent against further spread.
Anyone can access that plan at www.ncdhhs.gov.
Meanwhile, on the COVID-19 front, as of July 29th, more than 60 North Carolina counties are in the Orange Zone and are at “high” risk of coronavirus infection in their communities, according to the CDC. Most of those counties are in Eastern and Southern North Carolina.
It is recommended that people living in those counties continue to wear face masks indoors to minimize risk of infection, and get their booster shots if they haven’t already.
Please check your local media to determine the infection status status of your county.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment