The Meet the Press segment gets into the whole national disgrace of gerrymandering, especially as it's been practiced in North Carolina.
P.S.
Gerrymandering like this shite, pulling Wilmington Black voters out of Senate Dist. 7 (New Hanover) and adding them to the rural whites in Senate Dist. 8 (Brunswick and Columbus), so that incumbent Republican Senator Mike Lee has a better shot at reelection. A national disgrace.
A very full account at WRAL by Will Doran.
On the mail verification system, on Thursday the challengers pointed to a case in Watauga County — home to Appalachian State University and one of the 25 North Carolina counties that voted for Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 — where more than two dozen voters in a recent election had their mail from the elections board returned as undeliverable. But in every single Watauga County case, Voto Latino attorney Aria Branch said, it turned out that the voters were legitimate and that their mail had been returned because of mistakes made by poll workers or postal service employees.
To not allow voters in 2024 to know that their ballots are being thrown out due to similar mistakes, she said, would be an injustice.
Watauga Co Voting Rights Task Force (WCVRT) et al. v State Bd of Elections and Philip E. Berger et al. targets one particular section of S 747, "same-day" voter registration, specifically the "undeliverable mail provision" which can disenfranchise same-day registrants because of stupid postal or clerical errors.
Following the General Election of 2022, the WCVRT tracked same-day registrants whose votes were challenged because a card-mailing to their addresses of record was returned as undeliverable, almost always because of computer or clerical error. The same-day registrants were qualified voters but were in jeopardy because of dumb mistakes. For example, mail was returned that had been directed to Ms. Xxxxx Xxxxx, address "SAME." "Same"? Because there are two lines for addresses on VR forms -- the 1st one for a physical residential address and the second for a mailing address if different from the physical address. When Ms. XXXX appeared at her polling location during early voting to update her address and cast a ballot, the poll worker wrote her residential address on the 1st line and wrote "Same" on the second.
Dumb stuff like that can disenfranchise a voter, but S 747 went even further in targeting young voters. The law as passed would not only throw out a ballot of an "undeliverable mail" addressee -- it will do so automatically, with no notice nor means of appeal for the voter -- but also cancel the voter registration itself.
The WCVRT came to the defense of same-day voters. Meanwhile, Judge Schroeder has his own history of rulings on election law changes. In 2016, the Republican bosses in Raleigh, in the same bill mandating voter photo ID, attempted to end same-day registration altogether. That omnibus law also cut early-voting by a week; ended preregistration, which allowed people to sign up before their 18th birthdays; and repealed the provision that counted out-of-precinct ballots. The NAACP sued for an injunction against the entire law, which came before Judge Schroeder, who in April 2016 ruled it all perfectly fine by him. Fortunately, that decision was soon overturned by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled it all unconstitutional.
60,000 registered voters of color in North Carolina didn’t vote in 2020. "Those are the kind of numbers that change elections."
--Cynthia Wallace, New Rural Project
Since 2021, failed Democratic candidates Cynthia Wallace (she ran against Dan Bishop in 2020 in CD9) and Helen Propst Mills (ran twice in 2018 and 2020 for a NCSenate seat) launched The New Rural Project deliberately targeting "civic engagement" in the Black community, particularly that (large) segment not even registered to vote who tend to live in rural areas. Wallace and Mills formed a 501(c)(4) non-profit, recruited staff and volunteers, and adopted a "down home" approach as opposed to typical political advocacy. "They knocked on doors, sat on front porches, huddled in barber shops, and listened more than they talked" (CardinalAndPine.com). The New Rural Project originally targeted seven North Carolina counties — Moore, Hoke, Robeson, Union, Anson, Richmond, and Scotland. Wallace said, “What we really are focused on is giving voice to those who feel voiceless and helping those that feel unseen be seen and heard,”
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| Barbershop conversation. New Rural Project website |
This success in advancing Black candidates by rallying Black voters got expansion as the New Rural Project began beauty shop conversations to complement the barbershop meetups. “Every Black woman I know has spent her share of time in a beauty salon,” Wallace said. “And we’ve seen that happen in those beauty salons that the barriers kind of break down and you’re in a space that’s familiar, comfortable, and talking about your issues and your concerns .... We connect the dots between whatever their issue is and their civic life,” she said, “[bringing] it back full circle to why your civic engagement can actually solve these issues that you care about.”
As the owner of a start-up, Kate is involved in nearly every aspect of running the business - from corporate strategy to customer service. Not only is she in charge of logistics and inventory management, but she also handles company finances and pricing models. Kate is the primary content creator for the Pip & Grow blog and contributes to social media messaging. She also works in partnership with her co-founders to create and maintain influencer, media, and customer relationships.
The company garnered national attention winning both Outstanding Small Business and Retail Small Business at the 2018 SCORE Awards, an NC IDEA Seed grant in November of 2019, and Charlotte's Social Impact Inno on Fire Award in January 2020. Kate’s business journey has been widely documented in publications including Forbes and MSN.
According to Linked In, her control of Pip & Grow ended last April, and she's now running for the NC Senate out of principle -- people ought to have a choice -- in a gerrymandered district that is 62.3% Republican. She's a self-knowing sacrifice, and strategic about it. That motto, "Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Win," a brilliant piece of marketing. Instead of a terrible burden of marching to electoral execution -- dead candidate walking -- Kate Barr might be having the time of her life (and she actually could gather a movement of self-conscious parodists: "Get in losers, we’re (not) going to the Senate! #getinlosers #katebarrcantwin." Jokes can become movements. Yes they can. That's my theory.)
Kate Barr's shorthand Twitter bio: "Dem for NC Senate District 37. Gerrymandered out of a chance. F*ck it. I’m running anyway .... let’s raise a little hell and have some fun anyway."
Website: https://www.katebarrcantwin.com/
The Republican Incumbent
Member of the Iredell County Planning Board and treasurer of the Iredell County Republican Party. Sawyer and her husband own Sawyer Insurance & Financial Services in Mooresville. She seems civic -- served on the Iredell County School Facilities Task Force, co-chaired the successful 2014 school bond referendum committee, and has been president of Lakeshore Elementary and Middle School Parent Teacher Organizations. She is a Methodist.
Sawyer's now serving her 3rd Senate term (but in three different districts, because of the repeated attempts among her brethren to harvest, then prune, then harvest again the succulent fruits of gerrymandering).
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| The Democrats in the primary for HD 105: Nicole Sidman, Yolanda Holmes, and Terry Lansdell |
Yolanda Holmes is elusive on social media. She has a Facebook page which provides a link to a website, which is locked. The Facebook page is singularly uninformative. Found on the Internet: "The Rev. Dr. Yolanda Holmes, who grew up in the Charleston public schools and is a retired Department of Defense employee, is employed as Family and Community Engagement Coordinator with the CMS Family and Community Engagement office. She is associate pastor of New St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte. She earned a BS degree at Voorhees College, an MS in criminology at Indiana State, another MA in management, then a Ph.D. from Capella University." She works for the Charlotte Meck school system. She's a member of the long-running Mecklenburg County Women’s Advisory Board, an official county-appointed office.
In addition to his work with Clean Air Carolina, Terry has extensive experience with non-profits, including work with both Trips for Kids and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Terry’s work to advance sustainability is well known and was recognized by Sustain Charlotte in 2015 when he received their Outstanding Leader Award. His experience with large-scale event planning as well as grant writing will be invaluable to BikeWalk NC as we continue to grow as an organization. Terry’s background with bicycle advocacy is substantial, and his passion for both sustainable transportation and a cleaner environment made him the ideal person for the job. Terry is also an accomplished distance cyclist who has competed in four solo Race Across America events (RAAM), the Race Across the West on a fixed gear bicycle and holds the UMCA state record for North Carolina.
So far as I can discover, Lansdell has no social media nor a website (as of yet).
Nicole Sidman
Sidman beat Lansdell to filing but only by a day. According to Steve Harrison, "She hasn’t run for office before, though she ran Christy Clark’s successful 2018 state House race against Republican John Bradford. Originally from New York, she has been in Charlotte since 2017. She is the director of congregational life at Temple Beth El."
“I saw somebody who had promised her constituents one thing and then within a number of months completely flipped and it was not a decision she made without consequences,” Sidman said. “It was not just a political choice she made. By doing that she has really impacted people’s lives in so many ways.”
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| Mayberry |
This filing season, she gets Ryan Mayberry of Alexander County, an elected county commissioner and a builder, which puts him a few notches ahead of most of Madam Foxx's primary opponents. He's doing district GOP events too, which means he's campaigning (also rare for the breed that runs against Foxx). He recently attended and spoke at the Wilkes Co. GOP's Christmas Party.
On his Linked In page, Mayberry lists AppState for his education and mentions his 12 years as a county commissioner and his involvement with the Catawba Co. Land Use Development Board. Will look forward to learning his beef with the ineffable Foxx.