RIP Burt Reynolds.
This legend’s passing is another rattling news item in a week already dominated by Supreme Court nomination hearings and a notorious New York Times op-ed that has the West Wing in full freakout mode.
But something else is happening.
A whole lot of something elses, actually.
With just over 60 days remaining until Election Day, races for the 6,070 state legislative seats that are up this fall are kicking into high gear.
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And that doesn’t even take into account all the other crucial state races on the ballot, like attorney general contests and ballot measures.
Speaking of ballot measures …
Cooper: The legal drama surrounding the deceptively worded and generally bad-for-the-state constitutional amendments North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature is scheming to place on the ballot may have finally come to an end.
And no, it’s not a particularly happy one.
- After a frantic series of lawsuits and hearings and injunctions and rulings, Republicans have ultimately been successful in getting some super-troubling amendments on the ballot that would alter the separation of powers, judicial independence, voting rights, and more …
- ...but explained to voters in ways that obscure the drasticness of these changes and do nothing to indicate their practical impact on people’s lives.
Okay, not shockingly.
- After Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper lost his lawsuit against these two revised amendments last Friday, he immediately appealed to the state Supreme Court.
- On Tuesday, that court handed the governor a defeat. The saccharine-worded amendments, which do nothing to inform voters of the profound shifts in the state government’s power balance and misleadingly imply the the current elections board is not bipartisan, will be on the ballot in November.
- And as if that weren't bad enough, opponents of the tax cap and voter ID amendments lost their court fights, too.
- Remember, the voter ID amendment specifically is an attempt to do an end-run around a court ruling that found it (and other voting restrictions) targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision” and was struck down in 2016 for being super-freaking-racist.
tl;dr: The North Carolina GOP is misleading voters to in an attempt to make fundamental shifts to the balance of power among branches of government, obstruct ballot box access, and dramatically undermine the state’s tax base, resulting in inevitable cuts to schools and other essential government duties.
NBD.
- On Thursday, Gov. Cooper declared he’d “urge voters to oppose” the constitutional amendments.
- No word yet on what that actually means in terms of campaign time and resources.
Trumpy’s Machine: Speaking of North Carolina (don’t I always, basically?), earlier this week, the Trump administration made an unprecedented request of 44 of the state’s election boards.
- Specifically, that request was Turn over all your voting and registration data for the past five years kthx.
- Even more troubling, the request was made through a U.S. Attorney on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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- Immediate reactions concerned the possible compromising of the privacy of millions of North Carolinians, but justice experts worried the information could lead to voter intimidation and suppression.
- On Thursday, the Trump administration backed off … a little, anyway.
- The U.S. Attorney informed the state election boards that the deadline for the requested materials has been extended to January 2019—after this November’s elections.
Still, though. Not great.
Cannonball End-Run: Republican lawmakers in Michigan have revived one of their favorite (and sneakiest) tricks:
- Afraid a ballot measure you don’t like will be approved by voters?
- Then pass the same law before November, which removes the measure from the ballot, and then amend the law in the lame duck session after the election to make it more to your taste!
Some call it “bait and switch,” but I prefer “undo and screw.”
- This week, GOP lawmakers applied this little maneuver to two proposals that had received the hundreds of thousands of signatures required to place them on the ballot this fall:
- Raising the minimum wage to $12 per hour, and
- Requiring employers to provide paid sick leave to their workers.
- The new laws, which currently mirror the ballot measures, won’t go into effect until March 2019, and Republican have already publicly stated their intent to gut them.
- The laws passed by the legislature can be amended via a simple majority vote.
- If they’d passed at the ballot box, a three-quarters supermajority would have been required to amend them—and despite their best efforts via gerrymandering, Michigan Republicans just don’t have those numbers in the legislature.
- And even if Democrats flip one or both chambers in November, Republicans still have plenty of time to gut these bills before the new legislature is sworn in in January 2019.
Gat-her: Okay, let’s end on some good news.
Specifically, some details on how many more women are going to hold power in statehouses after this fall.
Fun fact: Women have won 2,669 major party nominations for state legislative seats this year.
- In Michigan, the state Senate is destined to go from four women members to at least eight (based on four safe Democratic seats, two safe Republican seats, and women running against each other in two other districts).
- All told, women are running in 25 of 38 Senate districts.
- The previous high-water mark for women in the Michigan Senate was after the 2004 election—12 women senators served in the following legislative session.
- In the House, women are on the ballot in 77 of 110 districts.
- Of those, 39 seats will likely be won by women (because they’re running in safe seats or in woman vs. woman contests).
- Another eight races are considered tossups between men and women candidates.
- The record for women in the House was a little more recent—33 women were elected to the lower chamber in 2016.
Well, it’s been a week. I hereby give you leave to take tomorrow off for a Burt Reynolds movie marathon. Just print this out and show it to your boss, I bet she’ll ask to join you.