Why Is New York So Worried About North Carolina?

By Susan Myrick, Civitas Review Online, July 29, 2013.

Okay everyone, I’m getting ready to talk about the New York Times — yes New York — and what appears to be their fixation with North Carolina.

In a follow-up New York Times blog, North Carolina: First in Voter Suppression to an earlier New York Times editorial, titled The Decline of North Carolina, David Firestone, projects editor, continued his/their attack on North Carolina.

While the Times’ editorial was a hodge-podge of criticism about this year’s legislative accomplishments, the newest article focused on North Carolina’s landmark election reform legislation.

For the most part it appears that Firestone is reciting Democracy NC (a Blueprint NC founding member) talking points in his article. Could be, since Bob Hall of Democracy NC, wrote a nasty little guest column for — that’s right — the New York Times a week after the first editorial. With a link to Democracy NC’s website, Firestone writes that “319,000 people who lack a photo ID and have a hard time voting.” To this point Mr. Firestone should have gotten back to Bob Hall, who has admitted that, even though it is his report, he knows that this number is way too high.

Firestone used the fact that President Obama won North Carolina by about 14,000 votes in 2008 to prove his point that Republicans were making these reforms because of politics. What Firestone forgot to mention was that President Obama lost North Carolina in 2012 by 92,004 votes.

But the funniest and probably most telling thing about Firestone’s article is when he condemns North Carolina for shortening early voting and eliminating same-day registration he fails to mention that New York does not allow early voting — AT ALL — and doesn’t allow same-day registration either. Talk about voter suppression. Maybe New York is trying to distract us all by calling North Carolina “first in voter suppression” while they don’t even allow early voting and to vote absentee they require an excuse!

With that kind of “reporting” we couldn’t expect Firestone to include the fact the Democrats, during their 140-year-reign, implemented many laws such as early voting (1996) and same-day registration (2008) in order to benefit their own party.