NCGOP Is Guilty of Election Interference

 

By Lee Franklin

It is hard to describe just how infuriating it has been as a Democrat from North Carolina to listen to Trumpist Republicans drone on about “election interference” and “rigged” elections.

Anyone who has paid attention to North Carolina since 2010 could point to countless examples of our hyper-partisan, extremist, Republican-controlled General Assembly restricting the rights of North Carolinians to participate in their own elections. Whether it was some of the most egregious gerrymandering in the country, changes to the laws governing state and county boards of elections, making judicial races partisan, or the implementation of oppressive voter ID laws, the North Carolina Republican Party has expended every resource possible to help themselves win elections.

With that in mind, it's obvious that the Trumpist obsession with “election integrity” is meant to undermine the very system it claims to protect. In the most classic Trump fashion, faced with legitimate accusations of attempting to subvert the will of the people, the Republicans have turned the criticism against those who are most desperate for fair elections.

And so it should have come as no surprise that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attempt to remove himself from the North Carolina ballot would be another episode in the long history of North Carolina Republican-led voter suppression.

Chief Justice Paul Newby

Thanks to the 4-3 ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court, Kenndey will be removed from the ballot at the expense of North Carolinians’ right to vote. By the Court's ruling that RFK has a right to be removed even after ballots have begun to be printed, the North Carolina Board of Elections will be forced to delay early mail-in voting to allow county boards of elections to redesign and print new ballots. This decision directly contradicts state law, which one of the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Republican majority even stated when he sided with the only two Democrats on the court in dissent.

To the Republicans and Trumpists out there complaining about election interference, what is election interference? Is it changing the rules at the last second? Is it allowing courts to disregard laws to benefit one candidate over another? Is it allowing partisanship to leak into processes that should be non-partisan?

I’m sure they would find a way to weasel out of this obvious point, but I’ll make it anyway. The Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly changed the rules of judicial elections to make them partisan, favoring Republican candidates. The newly partisan and therefore now Republican-controlled Supreme Court, ruled that the State Board of Elections must violate state law to remove RFK from the ballot, reducing early voting. All to the benefit of Donald Trump.

It doesn’t take a genius, but it may take an honest person, to recognize that the North Carolina Republican Party is guilty of election interference. In the face of this attack, North Carolinians must once again defend their right to vote at the ballot box. It's not fair, but it's our only option.

Lee Franklin is a former field director for the Watauga County Democratic Party. He works in Washington, D.C., as college campus coordinator for Earth Day.