DON SURBER: Media says voting threatens democracy.
The [Washington] Post story began, “The eight new members of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had run for office promising to ‘thwart tyranny’ in their lakeside Michigan community of 300,000 people.
“In this case the oppressive force they aimed to thwart was the county government they now ran. It was early January, their first day in charge. An American flag held down a spot at the front of the board’s windowless meeting room. Sea-foam green carpet covered the floor.
“The new commissioners, all Republicans, swore their oaths of office on family Bibles. And then the firings began. Gone was the lawyer who had represented Ottawa County for 40 years. Gone was the county administrator who oversaw a staff of 1,800. To run the health department, they voted to install a service manager from a local HVAC company who had gained prominence as a critic of mask mandates.”
The meeting was in January. The reporters were not present. But it ran pictures of the meeting taken by Evan Cobb, a freelance photographer from South Bend, Indiana. Maybe they interviewed him.
People elected an overwhelming majority of 8 new Republican commissioners (out of 11 commissioners) that the Jeff Bezos newspaper did not like. They made changes that the newspaper did not like, and so the Jeff Bezos Post said this threatened “the building blocks of American democracy.”
One of the changes made was to the county’s motto “that sat atop the county’s website and graced its official stationery.”
The 186-year-old county adopted that motto — Where You Belong — six years ago.
The new one is Where Freedom Rings.
Freedom must be a threat to democracy, too.
Similarly, AP is not happy with this development in North Carolina: N. Carolina justices sweep away district, voter ID rulings.
In massive victories for Republicans, North Carolina’s state Supreme Court on Friday threw out previous rulings that had declared illegal both redistricting maps for excessive partisanship and a photo voter identification law for being infected with racial bias.
The new edition of the court, which became a Republican majority this year following the election of two GOP justices, ruled after taking the unusual step of revisiting opinions made in December by the court’s previous iteration, when Democrats held a 4-3 seat advantage. The court held rehearings in March.
The 5-2 decisions likely to mean that a photo ID mandate approved by the GOP-controlled legislature in late 2018 will be enforced for the 2024 elections. Legislators also should have greater latitude in drawing legislative seat boundaries for the next decade that will reinforce their General Assembly majorities and assist them in winning more seats within the state’s congressional delegation.
Gerrymandering is apparently only bad when Republicans do it.