Robert Kuttner on the North Carolina Election Mess

I just got this e-mail from Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect magazine. What he doesn’t mention -- and what almost nobody commenting on the North Carolina Congressional election mess has, either -- is that the law the Republican Congressional candidate is accused of violating was originally passed by Republicans to stop ministers and others in African-American churches from collecting absentee votes for their parishoners and thereby increasing turnout in the Black community. — Mark Gabrish Conlan

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FEBRUARY 22, 2019 Kuttner on TAP About that North Carolina Do-Over Election. As you have probably read or heard by now, the ballot fraud in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional district was so brazen and so toxic that even the Republicans on the state election commission felt compelled to order a new election. Think about this for a moment. For years, Republicans have been justifying voter suppression measures on the bogus premise that ballot fraud was rampant among Democrats. A presidential commission on the subject, headed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Vice President Mike Pence, was abruptly shut down because, despite heroic efforts, no fraud was found. Well, the Kobach commission was looking in the wrong places. The fraud was on the Republican side. And consider this. Ballot fraud of the sort that was rampant in North Carolina’s Ninth is the flip-side of voter suppression. You can actually go to jail for stuffing ballot boxes, but nobody goes to jail for suppressing the right to vote—even that steals votes just as surely as ballot tampering. Indeed, if North Carolina were not one of the champion voter-suppressors, that election would not have been close. Now, with the Republicans having been caught red-handed, the Republican candidate shamed and the whole world watching, the Democrat might even win. ~ ROBERT KUTTNER