Pamlico County State Legislators

Last Friday I attended the Town Meeting with Pamlico County's State Legislators at Pamlico Community College's Ned Delamar Center.

First the good news. Both State Senator Sanderson and Representative Speciale have become more polished in their presentations since being elected to the state legislature.

I'll get to the bad news in a minute.

I don't know Michel Speciale at all, but I do know Norm Sanderson. He has always been completely courteous in his dealings with me, despite disagreements on policy matters. Now that I have heard the two legislators explain what they view as the significant accomplishments of the General Assembly in the recent session, I have many more policy disagreements.

Most of all, I am disappointed that neither elected official seems to inquire very deeply into the truth of matters affecting their constituents. That is, the voters in their districts.

One example: Michel Speciale's explanation of one provision of the bill making vast changes to election law in North Carolina. The legislature did away with same day registration of voters during one-stop, Speciale explained, "because there was not enough time to review and certify the voter before the election." He did not cite a single case where this had been a problem.

His statement is false in several dimensions:
1. It may not look like it, but votes cast at one-stop sites are actually absentee ballots. They are processed exactly the same way. They are reviewed by the county board of elections weekly during one-stop and either verified, rejected or set aside for further examination. Like any other vote, they don't count officially until the tenth day after the general election in even-numbered years or the seventh day after the general election in odd-numbered years.
2. Every ballot cast at a one-stop site, every provisional ballot and every absentee ballot is retrievable. (That isn't true for ballots cast election day). I don't know of a single case where a county board of elections was unable to determine validity of any such ballot by the time they completed the canvass.
3. Because ballots are retrievable, votes cast at one-stop, including those cast by voters using same-day registration, could be challenged right up to the time the board of elections completes tha canvass of votes cast.

Why does this matter?
a. It makes it possible for voters to correct any errors in their voter registration information even after the registration deadline. Voters often don't review their information until voting begins at one-stop.
b. It provides a safety valve against voter registration scams. In 2012, both in North Carolina and Virginia, "helpful" persons conducted voter registration drives in African American, Hispanic and College neighborhoods. They then tossed all the registration forms for categories they didn't want to vote.

This scam worked in Virginia, where thousands of discarded registration forms were found in dumpsters after registration closed. It was too late for the scammed voters to correct the record and vote.

The scam didn't work as well in North Carolina, where more than half of the voters cast ballots at one-stop sites. Because of same day registration, North Carolina voters were better protected from an insidious form of GOP election fraud.

Our state legislature has now made North Carolina safe for a particular form of targeted election fraud designed to suppress the vote in certain neighborhoods.

I don't know whether the legislators who voted for this change are dishonest or just gullible. I prefer to think they are just gullible.