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Nothing should be shocking after Jan. 6, 2021, when an American president\u2019s scheming to overturn the legitimate results of a fair election culminated in the bloody breaching of the Capitol. Still, I\u2019m aghast at the audacity of what Republicans here in North Carolina are up to.<\/p>\n
They are following in their leader\u2019s footsteps and trying to steal an election<\/a>. And if such an effort no longer seems as strange and sinister as it did before Donald Trump stormed onto the political scene and took a torch to whatever scruples still existed, that\u2019s all the more reason to examine it closely. We need to be clear about where things stand. With an election denier about to move back into the White House and his disciples emboldened, our democracy is in danger. That\u2019s the moral of the North Carolina story. It\u2019s much, much bigger than this state<\/a>.<\/p>\n The details: On Nov. 5, a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court was up for grabs, and the first official vote count showed that Allison Riggs, one of two Democrats among the court\u2019s seven justices, had won re-election by a slim margin. Her Republican challenger, Jefferson Griffin, demanded recounts. All in all, three separate counts gave Riggs a victory by slightly over 700 votes.<\/p>\n Which, in a properly functioning democracy with candidates and elected officials who put civic order and basic decency above their rapacity for power, would be the end of it. Hah. Griffin won\u2019t concede. He continues to contest the result, which is being litigated simultaneously in state and federal courts. There won\u2019t be any resolution for weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The nature of his complaint is especially insidious<\/a>. Griffin and the North Carolina Republican Party, which supports him, aren\u2019t producing evidence of voter fraud or a botched count. They\u2019re disputing the legitimacy of more than 60,000 ballots, principally because the registration forms of many of the voters who cast them lack either a driver\u2019s license or Social Security number, as law requires.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean the voters did anything wrong. Some of them may have registered before that information became mandatory in 2004. Long after that point, North Carolina routinely accepted registration forms without it. It\u2019s also possible that voters provided it but that it\u2019s not present in the state database because of administrative error or faulty record keeping.<\/p>\n The bottom line is that most or all of these voters had no reason to believe there was any issue with their status or their ballots, and they aren\u2019t being accused of malfeasance. They\u2019re just pawns in Republicans\u2019 last-ditch bid to reverse Griffin\u2019s defeat however possible.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s inexcusable,\u201d Heath Clay, a Republican city councilman in Summerfield, N.C., whose ballot is among those 60,000, said in a recent article<\/a> in The Times by Eduardo Medina and Michael Wines. He in fact voted for Griffin but accepts that North Carolinians \u201chave spoken\u201d and that Griffin lost, and he considers Griffin\u2019s attempt to invalidate his and others\u2019 ballots \u201ca direct attack on the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n Clay\u2019s appearance on the list of voters whose ballots are in dispute demonstrates that Griffin and his Republican allies can\u2019t even be certain that a new count subtracting those votes would benefit them. But many of those votes were cast with mailed ballots, and mailed ballots generally favored Riggs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Last week, the Republican majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court blocked state election officials from certifying Riggs\u2019s victory<\/a>, thus keeping alive the possibility that Griffin could join their ranks and give them a 6-to-1 advantage over Democrats, versus the current 5-to-2. That increases the chances of Republican control of the court for many years.<\/p>\n Which matters not only in principle but also in practice: The court\u2019s Republican majority has abetted Republican lawmakers\u2019 aggressive gerrymandering of North Carolina, whose current U.S. House delegation, for example, contradicts the state\u2019s political complexion. Although North Carolina has roughly equal numbers of registered Republicans and registered Democrats<\/a> and just elected a Democratic governor, Josh Stein, by a nearly 15-point margin, it has only four Democrats among its 14 members of the House. It\u2019s in some ways a paradigm of unrepresentative democracy.<\/p>\n And of Republican ruthlessness<\/a>. Don\u2019t take it from me. Take it from Andrew Dunn, a conservative who has worked as a Republican strategist and now produces a political newsletter in which he recently wrote<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019ve spent years pushing back against the left\u2019s tendency to go scorched earth in their rhetoric against N.C. Republicans. Everything is a \u2018state of emergency,\u2019 or \u2018threat to democracy\u2019 or \u2018war\u2019 on a beloved institution. Most of the time, it\u2019s dishonest nonsense. Not this time.\u201d<\/p>\n Dunn added that the North Carolina Supreme Court would destroy its credibility if it rewarded Griffin\u2019s machinations.<\/p>\n Perhaps one of its own five Republican justices, Richard Dietz, agrees. In a dissent from his colleagues\u2019 ruling that Griffin\u2019s complaint should be heard, he wrote: \u201cPermitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state\u2019s election rules \u2014 and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules \u2014 invites incredible mischief.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And incredible distrust of, and disgust with, the whole system. Except \u201cincredible\u201d isn\u2019t the right adjective. I\u2019m outraged without being the least bit surprised, and I\u2019m almost sure of this: The fight over Riggs\u2019s court seat is less anomaly than omen.<\/p>\n In The Times, Billy Witz described<\/a> a resident of the Pacific Palisades taking in the spread of the fires: \u201cHe saw embers land on a home, then watched as the flames spread like fingers around a jewel box until it was engulfed.\u201d (Thanks to Kate Kavanagh of Concord, Mass., for singling this out.)<\/p>\n Also in The Times, Amy Chozick questioned<\/a> the priorities of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California: \u201cHe did make time to do a lengthy interview with \u2018Pod Save America,\u2019 in which he defended his record and response to the crisis, explaining that he \u2018wasn\u2019t getting straight answers\u2019 from local officials. How about we Pod Save Los Angeles first?\u201d (That nomination comes from me.) <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Elle magazine, Gabrielle Korn looked beyond<\/a> the fires: \u201cUnless we confront the root causes of this destruction \u2014 climate change, capitalism and the political cowardice that enables both \u2014 we\u2019re just planting flowers in a pile of ash.\u201d (Also from me)<\/p>\n In Lookout Santa Cruz, Lily Belli delved into<\/a> the limited supply and high prices of a grocery staple: \u201cWe don\u2019t know if the chicken came before the egg, but the avian flu definitely came before the egg shortage.\u201d (Dean Gottehrer, Santa Cruz, Calif.)<\/p>\n In The San Francisco Chronicle, G. Allen Johnson praised<\/a> the latest movie in a British Claymation franchise, \u201cWallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,\u201d as \u201can impressive feat of clay.\u201d (Barbara Heroux, San Francisco, Calif.)<\/p>\n To return to The Times, Sam Sifton counseled<\/a> cooks through the making of French onion soup, <\/span>with its climactic topping of French bread and Gruy\u00e8re: \u201cBroil until melty, then serve to applause, as if you\u2019ve been running a brasserie in Montparnasse since the days of pay phones by the cloak room and ashtrays on the dinner table.\u201d (Marcia Lewis, Cohasset, Mass.)<\/p>\n Also in The Times, Maureen Dowd noted<\/a> the distance between Trump and other American presidents at Jimmy Carter\u2019s state funeral: \u201cTrump may be buoyed by his win, but in this exclusive club, he was largely narcissist non grata.\u201d (Helen D. Mooty, Seabrook, Texas)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Bret Stephens scoffed at<\/a> Trump\u2019s stated desire to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America: \u201cWhile he\u2019s at it, what about changing the name of New Mexico to \u2018Not Mexico\u2019? Or Arizona to \u2018Amerizona\u2019? Or El Paso to \u2018No Pasar\u00e1n\u2019?\u201d (Pat Marriott, Wilmington, N.C.)<\/p>\n And Ezra Klein beheld<\/a> the serial surrenders to Trump: \u201cDemocracy does not die in darkness. It degrades through deal-making \u2014 a procession of pragmatic transactions between those who have power and those who want it or fear it.\u201d (Helen C. Gagel, Evanston, Ill.)<\/p>\n In The Wall Street Journal, Holly Peterson examined<\/a> the reaction among the privileged and pampered populace around Mar-a-Lago to living where the denizen of the White House seeks reprieve, with hordes of journalists, security guards and supplicants in tow: \u201cDespite the hassles, most everyone here reports that they and their wallets are pleased to know that 45 will soon be 47. The headaches certainly haven\u2019t kept others from migrating like geese and competing, daggers out, for rare plots of pricey real estate. Enterprising developers may soon ensure that skyscrapers outnumber palm trees in West Palm Beach. So the moneyed Mis\u00e9rables persevere \u2014 and party hard \u2014 beyond the barricades.\u201d (Robin Hagey, Thousand Oaks, Calif.)<\/p>\n In The Guardian, Marina Hyde turned her gaze<\/a> to Elon Musk: \u201cWe all live in the Muskoverse now. It\u2019s a quirk of the age that the genius leading the race to the stars is also the idiot leading the race to the bottom.\u201d (Brett Howser, Laguna Beach, Calif., and Terence Flynn, Chicago)<\/p>\n
\nFor the Love of Sentences<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n