Editorial: NC legislators' votes become meaningless under leaderships manipulations

CBC Editorial: Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024; #8972

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company.

Imagine if, a few days after Election Day last month, state legislative leader Phil Berger announced the text of the ballot 5.7 million North Carolinians just cast was changed.

The candidates previously listed – who got their places through primary elections or party nomination – were being replaced with candidates of Berger’s choosing.

Further, there was NO new election. All the votes remained the same regardless of the new names Berger placed beside the checked boxes.

No new primaries to pick candidates, no new office-by-office elections.

The only opportunity for voters – approve or reject Berger’s new ballot.

If that seems an affront to the important process by which voters select officeholders, it most certainly is. Imagine the uproar from Berger or anyone else in authority in North Carolina or anywhere in the United States, if someone sought to pull off such a gambit.

But that’s what has been going on in the state legislature, on a regular basis, for at least the last decade where the leadership has corrupted the democratic process. Legislators cast votes on a bill about a specific issue then, months later, discover that their vote on the initial issue was irrelevant since the content of the original legislation had been erased. Their vote, instead, was being used to push entirely different issues that they’d not had the opportunity to debate or amend.

Votes in the American democracy are sacred – not trifles to be manipulated or exploited at a whim. The abuse in the legislature is an affront to democracy and the rule of law.

Take the most recent example. On April 26, 2023 the state Senate voted 48-0 for Senate Bill 382 after it was subject, as is the set-out process, to review in the Senate Committee on Health Care. On June 14, 2023 the state House of Representatives, after action in the House Health Committee, voted 106-0 for the same bill – with some modest changes from the original Senate version.

The 6-page bill that went through the legislative committees and full debate and floor votes was about changing laws concerning the practice of dentistry.

On Jun22, 2023 a conference committee of House and Senate legislators was appointed to work out differences and bring the issue to a conclusion. There is no record that that committee ever met.

One year and 151 days later (516 days more precisely), the members of the original conference committee were fired and new members named.

Minutes later, the 6-page bill dealing with dentistry law – that was unanimously passed by the state House and Senate – disappeared. In its place was 132-page bill that fundamentally changes the way North Carolina government works – particularly the conduct of elections; operation of the state’s public schools and universities; how public utilities are regulated, authority of the governor lieutenant governor, attorney general and superintendent of public instruction; health care; environment; law enforcement and the courts; transportation and the Highway Patrol; gambling; and much more. Let’s not forget it also covered designation of parking spaces in Raleigh’s state government complex and even the water and sewer systems in Sen. Berger’s home county.

Not mentioned ANYWHERE in revised 132-page bill – dentist, dentistry or laws concerning the practice of dentistry. The early 6-page bill had 85 such references.

Did any of those 154 legislators who’d voted for the bill in 2023 know they were REALLY voting to fundamentally change how North Carolina government operated?

Nope.

Were they going to have a chance to debate or change the legislation? NOPE.

Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore, and their associates in the legislative leadership, as if in an election, erased the original ballot. Without a public hearing, committee meeting to debate and amend the contents, conspired in secret and replaced the content with what they wanted.

For the overwhelming majority in the legislature, it was simply a matter of take-it or leave-it.

Real debates on the massive changes were held in secret party caucuses.

Process is important – not merely a formality.

The individual votes of the legislators were meaningless. More significantly, the voters who are to hold their officeholders accountable, haven’t any way of knowing what their representatives really did – or did not do.

Today gerrymandering has enabled legislative leaders to rig elections to give themselves a guaranteed overwhelming majority, regardless of the true composition of the electorate.

Now, they’ve manipulated making legislators’ votes meaningless.

The state General Assembly today, through abuses of the process, has become an autocracy and an affront to the voters and ALL the people they’ve elected to represent them.

Votes by legislators are expressions of obligation to their constituents. They are not convenient vehicles to facilitate someone else’s agenda.

Legislators should be true representatives of the people. They should act in ways that allow their constituents to know what they do and why they do it, so they can be held accountable for their votes and actions.

That is not the case today in North Carolina’s legislature. Our courts, state and federal, must determine that laws enacted in this manner are null and void.

More significantly, voters MUST hold legislators accountable -- for not simply their votes -- but their behavior. Corruption of the democratic process should not be tolerated and at the next election, those who fail heed the will of the people need to be replaced.