Pirate's Cove

This is the Biiiiiig editorial of the day for the Washington Post, in which they are Offended on behalf of….people who broke the law, because raaaaacism

An assault on minority voting continues in North Carolina

WHEN ELECTION officials in North Carolina audited the 2016 vote, they found 441 ballots had been cast by felons on probation or parole who voted despite a state law barring them from the polls until their sentences are complete. Those votes were illegal, but most state prosecutors sensibly declined to bring charges on the grounds that the offenders didn’t know the law, weren’t alerted to their ineligibility and didn’t realize they had done anything wrong.

Not so in Alamance County, a small locality in the Piedmont where a dozen individuals convicted of felonies, nine of them African Americans, cast votes. There, the Republican district attorney, Pat Nadolski, has gone forward with prosecutions that reflect his own lack of judgment while reminding the nation of North Carolina’s recent poisonous racial history.

In North Carolina, where 70 percent of the population is white, blacks represent a hugely disproportionate share of convicted felons and incarcerated people. African Americans make up more than two-thirds of the 441 citizens statewide identified as having voted illegally.

Aaaaaaand? Oh, right, raaaaacism. Just because.

In the case of the Alamance 12, as they are now known, most seem to have had no intent to break the law; they were simply unaware of it. As it happens, a bill to require intent as a precondition for prosecuting illegal voters died this year in the state legislature.

I literally had to look up the “Alamance 12”, because this is pretty much a complete non-story here in the Raleigh area, and Alamance County is just to the west of us, between Greensboro and Durham. The main city is Burlington. I’ve yet to run across a story at WRAL, WTVD, WNCN, Spectrum News, the News and Observer, Charlotte Observer, or any others. I see there are a few minor ones in a few outlets, but, no one cares except a few race-baiting activists. Because these people initially broke the law. Then they decided to break it again by voting illegally. Whether they meant to or not, breaking the law is breaking the law. If they happen to be black, that’s immaterial.

But, see, this isn’t really about the “Alamance 12”, oh, no

The prosecution of the Alamance 12 plays into the canard, peddled by President Trump and some other Republicans, that fraudulent voting poses a threat to the republic. In fact, there is no evidence that intentional voting fraud takes place in any significant numbers in North Carolina, where nearly 4.8 million ballots were cast in 2016, or anywhere else. The true offense is this kind of disproportionate prosecution. Republicans should ask themselves whether, in a democracy, it is admirable to find themselves continually on the side of those who are trying to discourage and narrow the vote.

It’s about Trump and Republicans being big meanies for wanting to protect the integrity of one person one vote and making sure that people who should not be voting do not vote. That’s the last paragraph of the WPEB’s screed.