North Carolina Open Thread: Moore vs Harper, Voting Machines, Voting access, Right wing extremists

Digby’s Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan, 9/15/2022

Contemplating whoppers informed by conservative nominees in current Senate confirmations, is it any marvel North Carolina Republicans consider conservative justices will discover “a 204-year-old lie” persuasive?

Representatives from the Brennan Heart demolish N.C. Speaker Tim Moore’s (R) argument for the “unbiased state legislature principle” (Politico):

This fall, the courtroom will hear Moore v. Harper, an audacious bid by Republican legislators in North Carolina to free themselves from their very own state structure’s restrictions on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. The swimsuit additionally serves as a automobile for would-be election subverters selling the so-called “unbiased state legislature principle” — the notion that state legislators have just about absolute authority over federal elections — which was used as a part of an try and overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The North Carolina legislators’ case depends partially on a chunk of paper from 1818. However there’s an issue: The doc they quote of their transient is a widely known faux.

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Peer again into U.S. historical past (some most regrettable) and names from South Carolina seem frequently: John C. Calhoun, Charles Pinckney, Preston Brooks, Strom Thurmond. Lindsey Graham is destined to hitch them.

Pinckney’s title is connected to the faux in query, a doc he submitted in 1818 that, students surmise, was Pinckney’s try and promote historical past on the notion that he was the true father of the Structure. James Madison responded on the time with a “detailed refutation of Pinckney’s doc together with the remainder of his copious notes from the Conference. It was the genteel, Nineteenth-century equal of calling BS.”

For over a century, the doc, says “a modern-day researcher,” is “most likely probably the most intractable constitutional con in historical past.”

North Carolina’s progress on prison justice at stake in excessive courtroom election

Dealing with South, Billy Corriher, 9/15/2022

The North Carolina Supreme Courtroom has damaged new floor in defending the rights of prison defendants in recent times, whilst different Southern courts have backtracked. North Carolina’s excessive courtroom, which has a 4-3 Democratic majority, has dominated alongside get together traces to restrict lengthy sentences for juvenile offenders and cracked down on the longstanding drawback of racism in jury choice.

However that progress might come to a halt subsequent 12 months, relying on the result of this 12 months’s excessive courtroom election.

Two Democratic seats are on the poll in November, and a nationwide Republican group has pledged to spend hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to assist flip no less than a type of seats, which might give Republicans a majority. Courtroom of Appeals Judges Richard Dietz and Lucy Inman are the Republican and Democratic candidates, respectively, for one seat. Justice Sam Ervin, an incumbent Democrat, is working for reelection in opposition to Republican Trey Allen, a former clerk to conservative Chief Justice Paul Newby.

Info can’t sustain with misinformation about NC voting machines

NC Coverage Watch, Lynn Bonner, 9/15/2022

Commissioners’ conferences in Surry County are a showcase of election conspiracy theories the place mistrust of the machines that depend ballots performs a starring function.

The northwestern North Carolina county on the Virginia border might be greatest referred to as the house of Mount Ethereal, the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry in his eponymous tv present from the Sixties. This 12 months, Surry County has been a cease on the circuit for distinguished election deniers who falsely preserve that votes have been engineered to have President Joe Biden win in 2020.  

The county devoted practically a whole Could assembly to election deniers that featured David Clements, a former assistant professor at New Mexico State College who travels the nation preaching about fraud. Clements, who misplaced his college job final 12 months as a result of he refused to put on a masks at school, urged Surry to hand-count ballots.