Early voting has begun for North Carolina’s May 17 primary. Most folks likely know a good bit about local candidates for seats on their county commissions, school boards, and Sheriffs. But they likely know a lot less about hopefuls for the seat being vacated by Republican Richard Burr. That’s because the U.S. Senate race features a cast of thousands, with 14 candidates lined up on the Republican ticket alone. That contest looks to be a three-man race between former Gov. Pat McCrory, U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker. Currently, polling seems to favor Budd, but McCrory has demonstrated appeal in the past, being the first Republican elected governor in North Carolina in two decades. On the flip side, he was also the first sitting governor in North Carolina history to lose a re-election bid. Regardless, this is a competitive race, and ads—often bruising ones—are filling the airwaves. The School Freedom Fund, a pro-school choice political action group riding the deep pockets of a Wall Street billionaire, has dropped $1.3 million for pro-Budd and/or anti-McCrory ads. The Club for Growth Action, one of two political action groups of the conservative Club for Growth, plans to spend $14 million along the same lines. There’s plenty more money rolling in from similar political action groups. Once the general election candidates have been decided, additional funds will flow freely from groups across the political spectrum. While there’s some question about contenders on the Republican side, the Democratic primary, which features 11 candidates, seems settled outside of unforeseen events. Cheri Beasley, who lost her state Supreme Court seat to Paul Newby in 2000 by 400 votes, is the clear frontrunner now that her main party challenger, N.C. State Sen. Jeff Jackson, exited the race to seek a congressional seat. Center and left-leaning groups will undoubtedly jump in to help Beasley. Beasley is beginning to advertise, but they’re genteel “get to know me’’ spots. Once the dust settles from the primary, well, hang on to your hat. The 2020 N.C. U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Thom Tillis and Democratic nominee Cal Cunningham saw unheard-of spending levels that topped $270 million. In an election year, where the power balance of the U.S. Senate could be changed by a unicycle accident—one seat would change the balance—it’s a safe bet we’ll see spending levels approaching, or surpassing, the 2020 total. As to learning something about the serious issues facing North Carolina and the nation, from the ads all that money will buy, well, good luck. The ads will be nasty, and they’ll be everywhere. No radio, TV channel, website, neighborhood Facebook site or mailbox will be safe from May 18th forward. It’s going to be a wild ride, fueled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that corporations and others can raise and spend unlimited money on elections. This opened the floodgates to largely unregulated, often essentially anonymous, campaign dollars. That decision codified the notion that money is speech. That can be debated. What can’t be debated is that money can overwhelm deserving, but less well-heeled, candidates by buying a bigger bullhorn and cranking that sucker up. So enjoy the relatively placid political waters of late April. They’re going to get real choppy, real soon.

The United States of America positions itself as the greatest nation the world has ever known. The nation was founded on the principle of “We the People” and majority rule and minority rights. I recall as a young man in junior and senior high school that the nation was truly focused on its principle of justice and fairness for all. I knew the nation was falling short as I watched the characterization of Black Americans on television, in magazines and in newspapers. To my disappointment, the nation continues to treat Black Americans as second class citizens. Supreme Court Justice Nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a well-educated and experienced jurist who was confirmed by the Senate, is being challenged for not being qualified. Tucker Carlson, commentator for Fox News asked to see Judge’s Brown LSAT score. This is shameful and another example of a Black person being subjected to a different standard. Carlson never asked for the LSAT score for the previous three White Supreme Court nominees. President Joe Biden calls Judge Brown “one of our top legal minds.” Don’t disrespect her and Americans with such outlandish requests! Being an athlete, I paid close attention to how my heroes were discussed, profiled and treated. We are all familiar with the fact that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier for major league baseball in 1947. We are not as familiar with Robinson’s story. He was not only a legendary and hall of fame baseball player, he was a civil rights icon. Starting in 1957, Robinson was vice president of personnel for the coffee company Chock full o’Nuts. If an employee had a complaint, he was the guy to talk to. That same year, Robinson started getting heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement, looking for equality for all African Americans. He spent a lot of time raising money for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), according to a story by Bill Ladson, who writes for MLB.com. America has recognized the greatness and courage of Jackie Robinson. I mentioned Robinson because of h is fame, but there are so many more Black Americans who have made significant contributions to the culture and greatness of America. Which brings me to the question of why Black people are treated differently in our country. It troubles me to see Americans such as Ahmaud Arbury being suspected of stealing while he is simply jogging down a quiet American street. His killers, Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William Bryan have been held accountable for basically saying he’s Black, we’ve had break-ins, so he must be the perpetrator. Fortunately, an all-White jury convicted these men for their racist and murderous act and they were convicted of federal hate crimes and attempted kidnapping for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery for targeting him because he was Black. That is a good thing. But Arbury should never have been killed. During a recent incident in New Jersey, police handcuffed and placed a knee in the back of a Black teen and directed the White Latino teen to sit on the sofa. The 15-year-old Joey, who identified himself as Latino, told a news outlet he was confused about why he wasn’t also detained, according to a report by Garin Flowers, an award-winning journalist and writing coach at the University of Southern California. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called this incident disturbing. I would agree. The point is, we have far too many instances of Blacks being killed by police and treated differently in this country. The question is, why? The same question could be asked about the unfair sentencing laws. Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who mistakenly drew a gun instead of a Taser and fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop was sentenced to an unbelievable 24 months. The sentence comes nearly two months after Potter was convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter. Prosecutors had requested seven years and two months while Potter's attorneys argued for a lesser sentence, pointing to her lack of a prior criminal history and remorse for Wright's death, according to CNN. I know an individual who has served more than 25 years in prison for a marijuana charge, albeit the since discontinued California “three strikes” sentencing guidelines. The family of Daunte Wright has every right to be upset with the sentence handed down by Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu, who called the sentence "an extremely difficult decision." Judge Chu was so upset she was on the verge of tears having sentenced Potter to 16 months after good time served and a $1,000 fine. DUI defendants receive more stringent sentences. This was a miscarriage of justice. That parents and school districts around the nation are focused on eliminating history that upsets or makes White people feel bad is a travesty. Are we ashamed of the history of Jackie Robinson? Who is now considered an American hero? Every player in Major League Baseball wears his number on April 15th every year. A mosaic of people contributed to the success of America. Yet we want to distort history because some folks are ashamed of parts of our history and don’t want children to know the truth. If Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Harvard graduate and distinguished jurist, is not qualified to be considered for the highest court in the land, Black people will never be considered equals in America. Our forefathers certainly embraced slavery, an act that is consciously abhorrent. Yet they had the wisdom to frame a document, the U.S. Constitution that began with “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” We have to move beyond the belief that Black Americans and People of Color are second class citizens, if we truly are to be a great nation that espouses these principles and values the contributions of everyone. Dr. Martin Luther King, said it best: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” Virgil L. Smith formerly served as president and publisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times and Vice President for Human Resources for the Gannett Company. He is the principal for the Smith Edwards Group and writes for Carolina Commentary.

Undermining voter participation privileges partisanship over democracy, whether it’s through distorted one-party districts (gerrymandering), or voter suppression. We need to consider not only strategies that re-configure districts fairly, maybe blindly, but also alternative voting methods that increase turnout. Gerrymandering produces extreme policies. And those are rarely our best choices, according to economics consultant Joel Naroff. “If we are to improve economic policy-making, we must eliminate the artificial factors creating so many one-party districts.” Capitalism depends on competition, especially in the marketplace of ideas. Politicians may espouse capitalism, yet gerrymandering—distorting voting districts to favor one party—chokes debate and exacerbates polarization. Most gerrymandered districts’ elected officials face competition from within their own parties: The only voters who matter are primary voters. Since those are usually the most motivated, if not the most extreme, members of each party, Naroff notes, “in those cases, economic policy veers toward the extreme ends of the governing party, so that elected officials can get reelected in the primaries.” Candidates who face competition are forced to consider alternative viewpoints to attract support, including those of communities of interest, such as minority voters. We need more, not less, voter participation. Extreme voter ID and absentee ballot restrictions are on the rise. Partisan efforts to control elections by removing local election officials and taking control of election administration have passed, or are pending, in many states, according to the Brennan Center. American democracy, rooted in slavery, continues to disenfranchise black and other minority voters. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 tried fixing unequal voting access, but in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court in 2013 voided the VRA formula specifying that districts be subject to federal oversight on electoral rules. The Court has since passed up chances to intervene. Participation and minority representation remain problems, particularly in light of the United States’ history of voter suppression, according to economists Alessandra Casella, Jeffrey Guo and Michelle Jiang, of Columbia University. Their recent paper tests an alternative known as “cumulative voting:” Voters cast as many votes as there are seats up for election; in an election with five winners, a voter may divide the five votes however they choose, three votes to one and two votes to another, or give them all to one candidate. Some U.S. localities already use cumulative voting to decide referenda and municipal elections. The authors compared standard one-vote-per-open-seat voting and cumulative voting, varying the number of seats and relative size of the minority. Their experiment confirms CV’s potential to increase minority turnout, compared to the majority, and the minority share of seats. “The most noticeable deviation from the theory is the majority’s persistently high turnout under [cumulative voting.]” Companies have used cumulative voting to ensure proportional representation, with each shareholder receiving one vote per share, multiplied by the number of available director seats. In another alternative, voters rank candidates in order of preference. Ranked choice voting is used in 43 jurisdictions in the United States. A candidate wins by receiving more than half of “first choices,” in races where voters elect one winner. If there’s no majority winner after counting first choices, there’s an instant runoff. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voters who chose that candidate as their first choice, will have those votes count for their next choice. This continues until there’s a majority winner, or a candidate winning more than half the vote. Voting rules like CV or Ranked Choice may increase minority turnout and buttress voting rights. Maybe even discourage gerrymandering. Can we create non-partisan districts in which candidates must win by wooing voters with alternative views, not simply pander to those who agree with them? The N.C. Superior Court recently upheld the state redistricting maps as drawn. The N.C. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case Feb. 2; the ruling is expected shortly thereafter. The Court postponed March 8 primary elections until May 17, 2022 because of lawsuits challenging the recently re-configured districts. Betty Joyce Nash reported for the Hendersonville Times-News and the Greensboro News & Record before moving to Virginia where she worked as an economics writer. She co-edited Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, published in 2017 by the University of New Mexico Press; the anthology probes Americans’ complicated relationship to firearms. She writes for Carolina Commentary. For more information, see www.bettyjoycenash.com

A chorus of calls for the expulsion from Congress of 11th District U.S. Congressman Madison Cawthorn, R-Hendersonville, has arisen in the wake of this weekend’s report in Rolling Stone that Cawthorn and six other GOP Representatives – Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Louie Gohmert (Texas) Paul Gosar (Ariz.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) – allegedly coordinated with the Jan. 6 rioters prior to the assault on Congress during the certification of Joe Biden’s 2000 election victory. The report didn’t establish direct ties to the violence of the day. Still, in an era where once-hypothetical questions seem to push close to reality every day, it’s worth asking if Cawthorn’s tenure is in peril. This isn’t the first time Cawthorn has faced such a c all. In January, following the riot, NC-11 Democratic Party District leaders said his expulsion was necessary under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which reads, “No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the U nited States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” That last line – two-thirds vote – likely means Cawthorn has nothing to worry about in the politically polarized Congress of 2021. Expulsions have been rare over the history of the country, but they have happened. The first instance was the expulsion of Democratic-Republican Sen. William Blount of Tennessee in 1797 for treason and conspiracy to incite a rebellion of Cherokee and Creek Indians to help the British conquer West Florida, then under Spanish control. In 1861 a slew of Senators and Congressmen, all Democrats, were expelled after President Lincoln’s election and the subsequent secession of Southern states. Among them were North Carolina’s U.S. Senators, Thomas Clingman and Thomas Bragg. After that it was all quiet on the expulsion front until 1980, when Pa. Democratic Rep. Michael Myers was expelled following a bribery conviction in the Abscam scan dal. In 2002 Ohio Democratic Rep. Jim Traficant was convicted on charges including bribery, racketeering and tax evasion and expelled. (He tried twice to regain his seat, including a run from prison). Earlier this year Rep. Jimmy Gonzalez, D-Calif., fielded a resolution to expel Rep. Greene of Georgia for being complicit in planning and inciting the storming of the Capitol. More than 70 Democrats backed that resolution, but it didn’t gain the backing of Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. And now, in Cawthorn’s case, the expulsion calls have arisen again. A statement from Cawthorn’s office described the Rolling Stone account as “complete garbage.” Cawthorn faces a host of challengers headed into the 2022 primary, including from some in his own party. One potential Democratic challenger, Buncombe County Commissioner Jasmine-Beach-Ferrara, issued a press release in the wake of the Rolling Stone article saying, “If this report is true, Madison Cawthorn should be expelled from Congress… I’ve already calle d on Madison Cawthorn to resign but since he won’t, he should be expelled.” Chris Cooper, the Robert Lee Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of WCU’s Public Policy Institute, said expulsion “happens, but it’s rare. The process begins when someone drafts a resolution to expel. It is then referred to the House Committee on Ethics. The committee would then conduct an investigation and take a vote. If they recommend expulsion, the resolution would then go to the House floor where they would need a two-thirds vote of the full House of Representatives; there is no need for Senate buy-in. At that point, the Governor could call for a special election to replace Cawthorn.” Cawthorn’s predecessor in the 11th District, Mark Meadows, who served as former President Trump’s chief of staff, has been subpoenaed by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot. This article originally appeared in the Sylva Herald.

Robert Charles Gabordi, former editor of the Asheville Citizen Times transitioned on Thursday, October 21, 2021. Bob was survived by his wife Donna, their children and grandchildren. Bob came to Asheville in 2001 and led the newsroom for the next four years. He joined the Citizen Times during a period of time when morale was low and the newspaper was suffering due to large budget cuts directed from our corporate leaders. As we searched for a new leader for the news team, corporate news executive Phil Currie identified Bob as a person who could get the newsroom going in the right direction. I recall Bob and Donna coming to our home where we introduced ourselves and began the discussion of what needed to be done to right the news ship. Those who knew Bob knew that he had great passion about his work and the news team. We knew he was the right person for the job when Bob put up a tent at his home in Arden and invited the entire news team to come for a meeting. I’m not sure what took place at that meeting, but I do know Bob made a connection with the staff, and we were off and running with our new editor. Bob was a believer in hiring people who were good and many who were young but had potential. The list of his hires is extensive and someof them followed him to his other editor positions in Melbourne and Tallahassee, Florida. Bob made a connection with the community with his candid and honest weekly column where he created a dialogue with readers, responding to questions and explaining coverage decisions. Bob was also engaged with technology and was the first editor at the Citizen Times to require adding email addresses to bylines so readers could contact reporters and columnist directly. In addition, Bob was not only a great editor, he was a great leader. When things got tough, he stood before the newsroom and talked straight about any issue. He celebrated success, and he had no problem giving someone the business if they did not meet his high standards. What I admired most about Bob were his values and his commitment to his faith, his loving family, his friends, his news team and the communities he served. Bob loved children as he coached little league in Asheville, coaching a diverse group of kids after long hours at the newspaper. The man was committed! He was a champion of hiring the best talent and giving people an opportunity, as evidenced by his hiring of current editor of the Citizen Times, Jewell Walston. Bob hired Jewell as the first woman as sports editor of the newspaper. She may have been the only Black female running a daily sports department in the nation at that time. Bob was fearless. I recall a visit he and I paid to former Sheriff Bobby Medford, who threatened to jail our reporter Ton ya Maxwell. Bob did not back down from the pressure of the sheriff and continued his investigation into corruption by Medford. He was feisty and operated without fear. You can read more about this encounter in Bob’s book and his commitment to journalism; “The Truth: Real Stories and the Risk of Losing a Free Press in America.” The work that was done during Bob’s four-year tenure is exceptional, as evidenced by the Citizen Times newsroom being awarded prestigious awards from the North Carolina Press Association and the parent company Gannett. The awards included Most Improved Newspaper, a first-place award for Public Service and a Gannett Gold Medal Award for journalism excellence, which represented being one of the top five newspapers in Gannett. Bob was a man who made a difference, and he will be missed by his family, friends, and those of us who were blessed to work with him. Joann and I send our love and prayer to his wife Donna and all of his children and grandchildren. Rest in Peace Bob! Virgil L. Smith formerly served as president and publisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times and Vice President for Human Resources for the Gannett Company. He is the principal for the Smith Edwards Group and writes for Carolina Commentary. This article originally appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times.

The political divide over global warming sometimes feels like the vax/anti-vax divide: science vs. politics. Seas are rising and warming. This intensifies storms and aggravates erosion and pollution. We can argue about who’s responsible and why, but our oceans, by most scientific accounts, are warming. This not only plagues those living or earning a living on the coast. Even if you’ve never swum, caught a crab, waded, or enjoyed the view of the Atlantic—any ocean, anywhere—you’re an affected stakeholder on the planet. Here’s what stakeholders could do now: Submit comments by Oct. 21 on the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s draft update to its Coastal Habitat Protection Plan to defend and restore coastal habitat and fisheries. The draft recommends nature-based solutions to revive wetlands. It addresses water quality through envir onmental rule compliance and wastewater infrastructure. It aims to map and monitor coastal habitat to protect submerged aquatic vegetation and improve water quality. Find out more, including how to comment, here. Even if you don’t “believe” in climate change, these sensible efforts can ameliorate ailing fish stocks and water quality. In 2012, North Carolina lawmakers banned the state from basing policies on the latest scientific predictions of sea level rise, after N.C. Coastal Resources Commission forecasts showed levels could rise by 39 inches over the next 100 years. Lawmakers’ action was significant enough for a TV moment. “I think this is a brilliant solution,” comedian Stephen Colbert said that night. “If your science gives you a result that you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.” But three years later, in 2015, a new report looked out 30 years, not 100 years into the future, a more acceptable time frame, certainly to those whose livelihoods—watermen, coastal property owners, developers—if not terribly useful to infrastructure planners. Even climate change deniers know weather challenges when they see them: intensified storms, like Matthew and Florence. The latter amassed $17 billion in damages. Algal blooms. Mountain mudslides. Killer summer heat. Rain-wrecked crops. Warming waters may not all be traced to climate, but heat exacerbates pollution’s effects and worsens the population-related effects: overbuilding, overfishing, over-trashing, over-pollution. In 2020, Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80 addressed climate change with strategies for marine fisheries, water infrastructure, air quality, and more. The weather playing the dramatic role is not specific to the coast. Hurricanes that start at the back end of nowhere can pack notoriously long, wide, often erratic and destructive punches miles from the N.C. coast. Already, myriad coastal projects are in place and working, r eports Carolina Public Press, efforts that preserve shorelines, including oyster habitat, an essential ecosystem. Fisheries management, as some species decline, or fish migrate north, seeking cooler seas, may be controversial. But they often succeed. Such environmental pro blems are characterized as “tragedies of the commons,” which refers to a resource everyone uses, but no one owns. The air, the oceans, and public lands are sometimes poisoned and overused/abused until ruined. We own these resources together. Let’s treat them right. Betty Joyce Nash reported for the Hendersonville Times-News and the Greensboro News & Record before moving to Virginia where she worked as an economics writer. She co-edited Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, published in 2017 by the University of New Mexico Press; the anthology probes Americans’ complicated relationship to firearms. She writes for Carolina Commentary. For more information,

In late March, lawmakers in the North Carolina Senate began debating a bill that would move up absentee ballot deadlines, forbid elections boards from accepting private donations for certain purposes and establish a fund to identify and assist voters needing a photo ID. This bill, introduced by state Sen. Paul Newton, a Cabarrus County Republican, seems relatively benign compared to the new election law Georgia just passed or to many being promoted by Republicans around the nation. More than 250 bills have been introduced in 43 states to restrict access to voting, according to a tally by the Brennan Center. The controversial new Georgia law imposes new identification requirements for mail-in ballots, curtails the use of drop boxes, blocks the use of mobile voting vans, allows electors to challenge an unlimited number of voters and makes it a crime for third-party groups to hand out water of food to voters standing in line. In fact, no bill that limits the ability of qualified voters to cast their ballots can be considered benign, unless it addresses an obvious source of voter fraud. And there’s no evidence of voter fraud in North Carolina’s 2020 election or anywhere in the nation. State and federal elections officials and experts in the private sect or declared the election “the most secure in American History,” despite claims to the contrary by defeated former President Donald Trump. North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham Republican, told an interviewer in March that he expected “you’ll see some legislation” related to voting before the legislative session’s filing deadline. Berger wouldn’t give details, according to a WFAE report, except to say Republicans would try to limit the State Board of Elections’ ability to change voting rules. But it seems unlikely that the Republican-controlled legislature will propose voter suppression bills as aggressive as some that have been introduced this year. One reason is that they don’t have enough votes to override a veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The second is that it turns out their own voters were some of the biggest beneficiaries of reforms that make voting easier adopted in North Carolina over the past two decades—and from emergency measures added because of COVID-19. In a joint commentary, Bob Hall and Rick Henderson wrote: “We are liberal and conservative leaders with decades of experience at policy organizations. We often disagree, but after looking at data from the 2020 election, we agree on this: North Carolina’s unique mix of procedures made voting easy and cheating hard, and helped produce a record turnout despite a deadly pandemic.” Hall is the former executive director of Democracy North Carolina. Henderson is former editor of the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal. They determined that more Republicans than Democrats used same-day registration, more Republicans than Democrats successfully used provisional ballots because they were in the wrong precinct or had not updated their registration, and a bigger share of registered Republicans than Democrats voted on the last Saturday of early voting (a day legislators had cut but restored in 2020 with extra hours). They also found that expanded recruitment of poll workers and federal funding allowed counties to open larger voting places and helped Republicans vote safely in person and vastly outnumber Democrats. Democrats dominated mail-in balloting, they determined, largely because President Trump vilified the practice. Still, 200,000 N.C. Republicans voted by mail, thanks in part to a “cure” process that let voters submit missing information to validate their eligibility. That would suggest, in North Carolina at least, the restrictive bills Republicans are pushing around the nation would do as much harm their own party as to the Democratic Party, which makes it a risky and potentially counterproductive enterprise if the goal is to win elections. That argument is bolstered by a recent poll by Carolina Forward, a grassroots policy organization, that shows majority support for automatic voter registration and for ending gerrymandering, the practice of gaining unfair advantage by manipulating the boundaries of election districts. The poll, published April 5, found 56 percent of North Carolinians strongly or somewhat support automatic voter registration for all eligible voters, 4 percent are unsure and 40 percent oppose it. When it comes to ending gerrymandering, 65 percent agree and only 11 percent oppose. The remainder said they were unsure. The nation just held the most secure election in its history, despite a raging pandemic. Republicans are being disingenuous when they claim that the new l aws they’re pushing are intended to make elections more secure. They are, instead, the latest iteration of poll taxes and litera cy tests intended to disenfranchise Black and minority voters. As New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie has pointed out, reducing the number of polling places and forcing voters to stand in long lines functions as a poll tax. But this time, such laws could backfire. Joy Franklin is a journalist and writer who served as editorial page editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 10 years. Prior to that she served as executive editor of the Times-News in Hendersonville., N.C. Franklin writes for Carolina Commentary.

Richard Burr gave North Carolinians reason to be proud of its senior U.S. Senator when he voted to convict in the impeachment of Donald Trump because he chose to vote his conscience rather than toe the party line. By doing so, he represented the state with integrity. For his vote, the N.C. Republican Party, his party, chose to censure him. They censured him not for some moral or ethical transgression, but for doing what he believed was right despite enormous pressure to do otherwise. Republican representatives and senators from other states who defied party orthodoxy suffered the same fate. Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who voted to impeach Trump, not only got censured by his state party, members of his family wrote a letter calling him a member of the “’devil’s army,’ (Democrats and the fake news media).” The vitriol contained in the family letter Kinzinger received from cousins and other unnamed family members is an appalling display of the fracture in many families across the nation. Because he could not countenance an armed insurrection, incited by Trump, against a co-equal branch of government, his cousins, Greg and Karen Otto, accused him of betraying his Christian values. “How do you call yourself a Christian when you join the ‘devil’s army’ believing in abortion!” they demand to know. And then there’s Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, one of several Republican members of Congress who objected to certifying the results of the 2 020 election. Six of his nine siblings appeared in an ad for his opponent in the election and since the insurrection, they’ve called for his removal from Congress. Countless books and commentaries by social scientists and pundits have attempted to explain how we got to this place with such passionate feelings and irreconcilable differences that members of families have turned against one another or simply no longer discuss politics for fear of creating unbridgeable estrangements. One of those books is Ezra Klein’s “Why We’re Polarized.” Klein is a columnist, editor, cofounder of Vox (an explanatory news organization) and a self-described liberal. He points out that both the Democratic and Republican parties were more ideologically diverse until the 1960s, and that acted as a moderating influence on pol arization. But when the Democratic Party embraced Civil Rights, it alienated Southern Democrats, the Dixiecrats who had been part of the party since Reconstruction. “Still, at the moment of rupture, the parties remained blurred. It is remarkable, from our current vantage point where everything cuts red from blue, to see a debate that polarizes the country without splitting the parties. But that was the case with the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Klein writes. The Democrats held majorities in both houses and the presidency, but 80 percent of House Republicans supported the bill while only 60 percent of House Democrats did. In the Senate, rather than go through the normal committee process, where powerful Southern Democrats would have killed it, President Lyndon Johnson worked out the legislation with then Senate minority leader, Everett Dirksen, an Illinois Republican. Southern Democrats filibustered the bill, but Dirksen corralled 27 of the 33 Republicans to break the filibuster. The bill could never have passed without Republican support, but Democrats get the credit, in part because Barry Goldwater, who became their 1964 presidential nominee, voted against it and proceeded to run on a state’s rights platform. The Democrats, who needed the Southerners to pass the New Deal and other national legislation, had accommodated their opposition to anti-lynching and other civil rights legislation. But the Civil Rights Act changed that. In 1964, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party. North Carolina’s Jesse Helms followed in 1970. Klein writes that Bill Moyers, who served as a special assistant to Johnson, recalls Johnson saying, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,” the night he signed the Civil Rights Act. The realignment resulted in parties where there are no longer Republicans who are more liberal than some Democrats or Democrats who are more conservative than some Republicans. Because that ideological diversity within parties no longer exists, party identification becomes stronger. Our political identities are polarizing our other identities and becoming mega-identities, Klein says. He quotes Lilliana Mason who, in her book “Uncivil Agreement,” wrote: “The American political parties are growing socially polarized. Religion and race, as well as class, geography, and culture are dividing the parties in such a way that the effect of party identity is magnified… A single vote can now indicate a person’s partisan preference as well as his or her religion, race, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood, and favorite grocery store… Partisanship can now be thought of as a mega-identity, with all the psychological and behavioral magnifications that implies.” Klein uses the title of Will Blythe’s 2006 book “To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever” about the rivalry between Duke and the University of North Carolina basketball teams to illustrate the power of the emotional rivalry between groups. “Human beings evolved to exist in groups,” Klein writes. “To be part of a group, and to see that group thrive, meant survival. To be exiled from a group, o r to see your group crushed by its enemies, could mean death…” As Sen. Burr and other Republicans have learned, breaking with the group by undermining its message brings your loyalty into question and carries the risk of ostracism. What’s most distressing about this is that the very thing about American life that should be one of our greatest strengths is becoming one of our greatest threats. We are not participating in politics to solve problems but to express who we are. And in expressing the mega-identities we’ve come to inhabit – conservative, gun rights, pr o-life Republicans vs. liberal, gun-control, pro-choice Democrats – we’ve forgotten the man y things we have in common and the ways in which we are part of overlapping groups – teachers, parents, volunteers, firefighters, musicians, football fans, neighbors, siblings. Most importantly, we’ve forgotten our most important mega-identity. We are all Americans. If we could but overcome the threat we feel from our fellow citizens – in many cases our own friends and families – we might recognize the strength to be found in the differences we all bring to the table and learn to use that rich resource to solve problems. Joy Franklin is a journalist and writer who served as editorial page editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 10 years. Prior to that she served as executive editor of the Times-News in Hendersonville., N.C. Franklin writes for Carolina Commentary.

We approach a most joyous time of year, filled with festivities, family reunions and religious significance. But this year we will need to find creative ways to celebrate gratefulness, love and family. As the holidays loom, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken an ominous turn for the worse. During the first week of November, there were 17,759 new cases of the coronavirus in North Carolina. On Wednesday, Nov. 11, the state set a new daily record of 3,119 lab-confirmed cases, breaking the previous record of 2,908 cases set on Nov. 6. “This is not the milestone we want to be hitting, particularly as we head into holidays where people want to come together. I am asking North Carolinians to do what they do best, look out for each other,” North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mandy K. Cohen said during a briefing. As of Nov. 12, a total of 303,931 North Carolinians had contracted COVID-19 and 4,730 had died from it. Nationwide, epidemiologists, scientists and public health officials are warning that the worst days of the virus are ahead. The upcoming holidays create the potential for innumerable super-spreading events and set the country up for a “COVID hell” in the words of epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who was recently named to President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force. On Nov. 9, Pfizer announced a vaccine that is more than 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19. But it appears unlikely that large numbers of people will be able to get it until the spring of 2021, too late to save us from a potentially deadly winter. Doctors have gotten better at treating the virus, but vulnerable people still die from it. On Tuesday, Nov. 10, Gov. Roy Cooper issued an order reducing the number of people allowed at indoor gatherings from 25 to 10. The order took effect on Friday, Nov. 13, and lasts until Dec. 4. But no executive order will keep us safe . Only by taking personal responsibility for following the guidelines that have proven effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 can we hope to get through the next few months without losing hundreds or even thousands more North Carolinians to the virus. While the threat may seem abstract unless you or someone you love has contracted COVID-19, failing to adhere to those safety protocols is akin to playing Russian roulette with your own and others’ lives. The best way to reduce the risk of viral transmission is to limit travel and limit physical contact with people who do not live in your household, according to the NCD HHS. Instead of visiting in person, this is a good year to take advantage of virtual platforms to send greetings and to stay in touch with loved ones and neighbors. But if you have grown weary of prohibitions against gathering with friends and family, consider holding an outdoor celebration. For instance, throughout North Carolina there are brilliant winter lights displays where families and friends can rendezvous and share a bit of outdoor magic. You’ll find some of them listed below. Keep in mind that any gathering with people outside your own home poses a risk for COVID-19 transmission. But if you do choose to host a gathering, NCDHHS offers guidelines for hosting lower and moderate risk activities. Most importantly, if you do gath er with people outside your household, follow the advice of NDHHS Secretary Cohen to wear a mask, wait six feet apart and wash your hands often. “We’ve had more time to learn about this devastating virus and study after study shows that these three simple actions can help keep our family, friends and neighbors from getting sick,” Cohen said. With the announcement from Pfizer of a promising vaccine, we can begin to see our way out of this valley of despair. That gives us much to be thankful for this holiday season. But for now, doing all we can to keep our family and friends safe from a potentially deadly virus is the best gift we can give them.

Over the past decade, there’s been a growing militarization of hate groups that call themselves “militias.” These are people driven largely by white-extremists views. Many policy experts believe these people are very distraught about the growing demographic diversity of the United States. William H. Frey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution, confirms the trend: “The nation is diversifying even faster than predicted, according to new center data.” Militias date back to 1792, when the U.S. Congress provided for their organization and empowered the President of the United States to take command of the state militias in times of imminent invasion or insurrection. The original Militia Act was repealed and replaced in 1795, 1808 and 1862 during the Civil War. The Militia Act of 1903 repealed and superseded the Militia Act of 1795 and established the U.S. National Guard as the nation’s chief body of primary organized military reserves in the country. “Militia” generally refers to a group of able-bodied residents between certain ages who may be, at some point, called up by the government to defend the United States or an individual state. I cannot think of any American, male or female, who would not rise to the occasion to defend the homeland against foreign or domestic invaders or terrorists. Our nation may be diversifying faster than predicted, but that fails to explain the global growth of far-right extremists. A study of German society’s biggest fears, released earlier this year by the Berlin Social Science Center, showed that one in three respondents feared “foreign infiltration” because of the immigrant influx. In Germany, militias say they patrol in locations where the police do not. This has caused many Germans to worry, as militias seek to bar immigrants from entering the country and receiving jobs and social benefits in Germany. In the United States, militias have a recent record of violence nationwide. FBI Director Christopher Wray in his statement before the House Homeland Security Committee in September, said: “The greatest threat we face in the homeland is that posed by lone actors radicalized online who look to attack soft targets with easily accessible weapons. We see this lone actor threat manifested both within domestic violent extremists and homegrown violent extremists.” Wray went on to say that domestic violent extremists are individuals who commit violent criminal acts to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as racial bias and anti-government sentiment. “The top threat we face from domestic violent extremists stems from those we identify as racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVE). RMVEs were the primary source of ideologically m otivated lethal incidents and violence in 2018 and 2019 and have been considered the most lethal of all domestic extremists since 2001.” Will Carless and Michael Corey, writers for Reveal, of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Journalism, surmise the broader militia movement has been a breeding ground for racist domestic terrorism. The Southern Poverty Law Center followed 940 hate groups across the United States in 2019. In North Carolina, the SPLC tracked at least forty (40) hate groups, according to Keegan Hankes, a researcher who says the number is growing. You can follow SPLC updated information on twitter @hatewatch. The critical question is: What do you do about militia s and hate groups in America that conspire to take the law into their own hands, such as the would-be kidnappers in Michigan and Virginia who plotted to kidnap and possibly take the life of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia. Their goal was to instigate a civil war. What drove these men in Michigan to think that this is okay to kidnap and threaten American governors? Why are they anti-government and plotting for social unrest? Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab and Professor of Education and Sociology School of Education at American University, has studied the issue. “The goal of the extreme right is to establish white-ethnocentric status, deportation of nonwhites or non-Europeans, and the reduction of the rights for ethnic minorities,” she writes in her book; Hate in the Homeland, The New Global Right. The political polarization and the silence from our governmental and political leaders, who continue to wink and nod at the behavior of these anti-American groups is troubling, to say the least. For America to turn the tables on what the FBI director call s our greatest threat. We need the collective resolve of the people to change the hearts and minds of those who diminish nonwhite people and seek to destroy our government and our democracy. The road ahead will challenge us to reclaim who we are as Americans. Virgil L. Smith formerly served as president and publisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times and Vice President for Human Resources for the Gannett Company. He is the principal for the Smith Edwards Group and writes for Carolina Commentary.

The calendar says election day is Nov. 3, but here in North Carolina, it’s already begun. The State Board of Elections began mailing out absentee ballots Friday, September 4th to voters who had requested them. Some have already been returned. In North Carolina, any registered voter can request such a ballot and vote by mail. With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, that option is being explored by a record number of North Carolinians. As of last week, more than 640,000 requests had been logged, compared to fewer than 40,000 over the same period in 2016. Of those requests, 337,362 were from registered Democrats, 200,359 Unaffiliated and 103,620 Republicans. N.C.’s 11th Congressional District, which includes Jackson County, also saw a big jump, said Christopher Cooper, Department Head of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University. He noted, “Traditionally, there has not been much of a partisan divide in NC on absentee by mail requests—this year is not following tradition.” Almost half – 44 percent – of the 540 requests were from Democratic voters. Cooper said, “Some of the NC11 counties have some of the biggest increases over 2016, including Buncombe (a 360 percent increase over 2016) and Haywood (375 percent). Henderson also rates high – 14 percent of registered voters in Henderson county have requested a ballot.” What do the early returns say? “I’ve been joking that reading the tea leaves into return patterns at this point would be like thinking you know something about a baseball season based on whether the first pitch of the first game was a strike,” Cooper said. “Still—it’s important to report, in my opinion, because it shows that vote by mail is working and that counties are processing the requests as they’re supposed to.” Voters can return their ballot by mail or return it to the elections board. One thing they can’t do is vote twice, despite some suggestions to the contrary in recent days. Karen Brinson Bell, N.C. State Board of Elections Executive Director, said it’s a Class I felony for a voter who has “intent to commit a fraud to register or vote at more than one precinct or more than one time … in the same primary or election… Attempting to vote twice in an election or soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law.” There’s been some irresponsible talk that people should mail in a ballot and then attempt to vote in-person to test the system’s integrity. We imagine “testing the system’’ is as likely to hold up in court as saying you yanked on the door of that armored bank truck just to make sure your money was safe. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is Oct. 27, but given recent issues with the USPS its recommended voters do so well before that date. In-person early voting begins Oct. 15. Will the surge in mail voting delay North Carolina’s count when the polls close at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 3? Possibly, but likely only minimally. Under state law, ballots postmarked on or before 5 p.m. Election Day and arrive before Nov. 6 are counted. In squeaky-tight races – like North Carolina’s 2016 gubernatorial race, decided by less than 11,000 votes – those late-breaking votes could be critical. But most results in the state should be obvious on election night. And remember, elections officials don’t declare winners on election night. They release official numbers following a canvass. Media outlets do declare election night winners; this year, if that doesn’t happen in some races, remember these words from Associated Press Deputy Managing Editor David Scott on horse-race winner calls: “It’s always been an unfair expectation ‘in time for your late local news’ on the East Coast. It was unfair before the pandemic. It’s definitely unfair in a pandemic now.” In other words, it’s 2020. Be patient in seeing how your vote impacts the election. The first step in that process, of course, is to be sure you cast it in the first place. Jim Buchanan is the editor of The Sylvia Herald, former Editorial Page Editor for the Asheville Citizen-Times and writes for Carolina Commentary.

North Carolina could miss out on an additional congressional seat and forfeit billions of dollars in state and federal tax dollars that rightfully belong to state citizens unless the people who live here get more serious about participating in the 2020 Census. North Carolina’s response rate is poor overall and abysmal in some counties where those dollars, sent to Washington in the form of taxes paid by North Carolinians, are desperately needed. Unless the census reflects an accurate count of Tarheel residents, North Carolina’s share of federal money will go to other states. As of August 13, North Carolina’s response rate of 59.6 percent trailed the national response rate of 63.6 percent by four points. Response rates in some counties were far worse. Examples include: Avery, 29.9 percent; Swain, 33.3 percent, Jackson, 33 percent; Dare, 34.8 percent, Hyde, 38.5 percent. The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 2) requires that a census of the nation’s population occur every 10 years. The first one took place in 1790. The most basic reason for the census is to apportion the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The number of representatives is fixed by law at 435. Based on its population in 2010, North Carolina sends 13 to Congress. While some states are projected to lose seats after the 2020 census, North Carolina is projected to gain a seat. Census counts are also used for redistricting within the state, which means undercounted areas won’t get fair representation in state government either. By not participating in the Census you are disempowering yourself and your community and not just by the loss of fair representation in federal and state government. Based on Census data, states and local communities received more than $675 billion in federal funds for health, education, housing, and infrastructure programs during Fiscal Year 2015, according to one study. Every person counted in the Census brings about $2,000 in federal spending to the state over the next 10 years, another study estimated. Census counts are used by federal, state and local governments to plan the location of everything from post offices and schools to libraries and fire stations. A community that’s undercounted could face a longer drive (on poorer roads) to use a library computer or longer wait times for a fire truck or the EMS to arrive. Those extra minutes could make a life or death difference in some heart attack, allergic reaction or drug overdose cases. When scouting for locations, manufacturers, businesses and commercial outlets also use Census data. Undercounted areas are less likely to attract the jobs and opportunities they offer. And as any genealogist knows, Census data is an invaluable source of family history. The information – name, age, gender, ethnicity and relationship to the head of household of each person living at a given address – cannot, by law, be released by the U.S. Census Bureau for 72 years, not to the public or to any other government agency, including law enforcement or immigration authorities. All Census workers are sworn to protect this information and can be punished by a $250,000 fine and five years in prison if they fail to do so. Only demographic data is released. But for anyone wanting to know more about who and where they came from, once it’s released after 72 years, Census data provides vital information. For instance, the descendants of recent immigrants will one day be able to find their ancestors and mark the arrival of their family in the United States through Census data. The 2020 Census operation began in 2019, but was put on hold in the spring as a result of the pandemic. In April, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham asked Congress to extend the statutory deadlines. That hasn’t happened, but 48 senators are asking Senate and House leaders to include an extension in the next coronavirus relief package. In the meantime, the Census restarted in July. At the beginning of August, the Trump administration decided to end all counting efforts on Sept. 30, a month sooner than previously announced. If no extension is granted, the result is expected to be a grievous undercount, especially in poor and minority communities. Everyone living in the United States is required by law to respond to the Census. Census workers are being trained and deployed to knock on the doors of people who haven’t yet done so. These workers will have government identification badges, will be wearing face coverings and are being trained to follow other safety precautions to reduce the risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus. But without an extension, it seems unlikely they will be able to get a complete count. If you are one of those non-participants, you can save yourself from having your day interrupted by a census worker and help stake your own and your community’s claim to your rightful voice and share of assets by completing the Census online or over the phone. Both options allow you to choose your preferred language. It will take less than 10 minutes. Our founders understood that having accurate demographic information was essential to allocating power and resources equitably in a self-governing nation. Every North Carolinian ought to do his or her part to insure our state gets its fair share of both. Joy Franklin is a retired journalist who writes for carolinacommentary.com.