The NCGOP Really Doesn’t Want to Count Those Votes
Everything you need to know for Friday, Oct. 23: Why does Trump lie all the time? + What does John Kane want us to do exactly? + Why the state Supreme Court races matter.
Friday, Oct. 23, 2020
11 days until the election.
4 days until the deadline for absentee ballot requests.
8 days until early voting ends (you can register when you vote at EV sites). Find your EV site here. Find out how long you’ll have to vote early in Wake County here and Durham County here.
89 days until the inauguration.
Today’s Number: 74,786
Difference between the number of people who already voted in North Carolina as of Thursday morning (2,437,417) and the total number of those who voted for Donald Trump in North Carolina in 2016 (2,362,631).
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> NCGOP Asks Supreme Court to Shut Down Late Absentee Count
I’m not pollyannaish enough to believe politics is anything other than a zero-sum game. Even so, the lengths to which Republicans have gone to make mail-in voting more difficult during a pandemic—and the unvarnished cynicism on display—are remarkable.
Ignore the “voter fraud” rhetoric. Here’s the reality: Democrats are voting by mail. Republicans want to disqualify as many of those votes as possible.
Yesterday, the Trump campaign and North Carolina Republicans asked the Supreme Court to block the State Board of Elections from counting late-arriving ballots postmarked by Election Day. The SBE adopted that policy as part of a legal settlement with a voting rights group, which cited concerns about postal delays.
Check out the NCGOP’s logic bomb:
State Republican legislative leaders argue in their appeal that the longer deadline, which was extended after early voting had begun, will result in unequal treatment of voters and dilute the value of those who cast ballots before the rule was changed.
Phil Berger and Tim Moore also argue that the SBE usurped the legislature’s authority. That’s the same argument Pennsylvania Republicans made earlier this week when they asked the Supreme Court to overrule the state Supreme Court and prevent absentee ballots from being counted after Election Day. The court split 4-4, leaving the state ruling in place.
Not to be outdone, the Trump campaign also wants the Supreme Court to reverse SBE guidance that allows voters to cure minor ballot problems—such as an incomplete witness address—via an affidavit rather than redoing their ballot from scratch. (A federal judge previously struck down a settlement provision that allowed voters to cure the witness-signature requirement through an affidavit.)
There’s no compelling justification for pursuing either of these reversals. Republican wins won’t make the election any more secure or fraud-free.
But combating fraud isn’t really the point, is it?
LOCAL & STATE
—> Downtown South Developers Say They’ll Need the City’s Help to Build Affordable Housing
Developer John Kane and North Carolina FC owner Steve Malik—both of whom have more money than God—are building this gargantuan mixed entertainment district called Downtown South in South Raleigh. But now the developers say that if the city wants “community benefits” like a stadium, green stormwater infrastructure, and affordable housing, it will have to help foot the bill.
On Tuesday, Bonner Gaylord, managing director of operations for Kane Realty, asked city leaders to consider a tax increment grant to cover the costs of providing community benefits like affordable housing, green stormwater infrastructure, workforce development programming, and the sports and entertainment venue itself. …
The development would increase the value of the property, which would normally result in more property tax revenue for local governments. Under a tax increment grant, the city would receive the same amount of property taxes it currently receives, and the increase the developers would normally pay would go back to the developers to cover the cost of the community benefits.
No grant, no project, Gaylord said. And they won’t be able to commit to those community benefits as part of the rezoning process, either.
“We really need to know whether this rezoning is viable before closing on the land,” said Gaylord, who is a former Raleigh City Council member. “So we do have a time frame here that is limited because of that closing.” …
He said he recognizes people’s concerns about approving the rezoning first and the community benefits after.
“In any process like this where we are trying to get somewhere together, it is going to require some trust,” Gaylord said in an interview with The News & Observer. “We know that trust is derived through transparency and engagement.”
—> Local Restaurants Win Big Lawsuit Against Insurance Companies
In the very first PRIMER, I mentioned that 16 Durham restaurants were suing their insurance company, which—like insurance companies all over the country—had denied their pandemic-related business-interruption claims.
Guess what? They won.
Restaurateur Giorgio Bakatsias had been paying thousands of dollars for business interruption insurance. But when he filed a claim after his restaurants were forced to shut down due to the pandemic, it was denied. His insurer, Cincinnati Insurance Company, said the policy “exclusions” in his contract meant his restaurants didn’t qualify for payouts. Bakatsias sued and was joined in the lawsuit by chef Matt Kelly. Their case is just one in a sea of similar lawsuits flooding courts across the nation. …
But this month, a North Carolina judge ruled Cincinnati Insurance Company must honor the firms’ business interruption policies and pay out their claims.
The insurance company, backed by Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, will appeal. But if the ruling stands, it will have far-reaching implications.
In a statement, plaintiffs' attorney Gagan Gupta of Paynter Law called the ruling “The first victory among the thousands of such lawsuits across the country. It’s a historic and powerful win for policyholders during the era of economic devastation for small businesses everywhere,” he stated. …
NCDOI estimates show small business continuity losses from Covid-19 could amount to anywhere from $220 billion to $383 billion per month.
—> The Chief Justice Race Will Shape Civil Rights in NC for Years to Come
Writing in The Appeal’s Political Report, Kyle C. Barry takes a deep dive into the race for North Carolina chief justice, between Cheri Beasley and Paul Newby.
The former, the first Black woman to serve as chief justice, acknowledged amid the George Floyd protests that “African Americans are more harshly treated, more severely punished, and more likely to be presumed guilty.” The latter, a white former prosecutor, has countered, “Where’s the evidence that we’re not treating everyone the same?”
Beasley and Newby’s statements are not simply the personal or political views of each justice, carefully set aside when they don their robes. They play out in the Court’s decisions. In the last year, with Beasley as chief justice and with the addition in 2019 of Justice Anita Earls, a longtime civil rights leader, the Court made a series of rulings protecting the rights of Black people against systemic racism in the criminal legal system, which included decisions about whether Black people can be struck from juries, whether they will get a fair trial, and whether they will be executed.
Newby dissented in each of these cases, often alone.
—> The North Carolina Roundup
Durham was the only city in the country honored for its participatory budget program.
RDU isn’t keen on Morrisville’s plan to let people live closer to the airport.
I told you this dude was a nutter: “NC Lt. Gov. candidate [Mark Robinson] appeared with religious leader who plans to become king of the US.” Robinson also has some conspiratorial ideas about the (((Rothschild))) family.
WRAL anchor Kathryn Brown is quitting the biz.
Fort Bragg blamed a hack for its, um, randy tweets. It wasn’t.
A Morning Consult poll has Cal Cunningham up 48-42 over Thom Tillis and Joe Biden up 50-47 over Donald Trump in North Carolina.
Jane Porter will take my old job as editor of the INDY. For what it’s worth, Jane—a former INDY staff writer and most recently the editor of Raleigh magazine—is wonderful, she’ll be great, and I’m thrilled for her.
—> Weather
Partly cloudy, high of 80 🌤
NATION & WORLD
—> Biden Proposes a Bipartisan Court Commission
After being pressed for weeks on whether he’ll add seats to the Supreme Court, Joe Biden came up with the most Joe Biden answer possible: a bipartisan commission.
Biden said in an interview excerpt released Thursday that he would create bipartisan commission to study the court system “because it’s getting out of whack.”
The Democratic presidential nominee, who has avoided answering whether he would want to expand the Supreme Court by adding more justices, said in the interview with “60 Minutes” that the commission would look at that issue among others and make recommendations in 180 days. …
Pressed by O’Donnell about whether the study will focus on “court-packing,” Biden suggested it would be far broader and “go well beyond packing.”
“The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want,” he said. “Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices stay for generations.”
This might be the “smart” political move 11 days from an election. It’s certainly the safe one. Biden hasn’t foreclosed adding seats, but he hasn’t given Trump a cudgel either.
Still, if this is more than a stalling tactic—if Biden is naive enough to believe Republicans will play ball or have any interest in reforming a judiciary that works to their benefit—that doesn’t bode well for his presidency.
RELATED: After changing its rules to circumvent a Democratic boycott, the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate. The final vote is scheduled for Monday, just a month after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and eight days before the election.
RELATED: Violating an agreement with CBS News, President Trump released the full footage of his interview with 60 Minutes on Facebook. He whined a lot. More importantly, he admitted he wants the Supreme Court to kill the Affordable Care Act.
—> The Brief: 5 Stories to Read Today
Trump managed not to light himself on fire, but he lied a lot last night, then said he is the “least racist person in this room.” Trump downplayed COVID and tried to make the Hunter “scandal” a thing; Biden had a decent closing statement but was fairly mediocre. In all likelihood, nothing changed. But let’s all remember this moment.
Sadly, I suspect this is correct:
But I am very grateful that this is correct:
Facebook executives tweaked their algorithm to appease right-wing websites. “Near the close of the first year of the Trump presidency, executives at Facebook were briefed on some major changes to its News Feed—the code that determines which of the zillions of posts on the platform any one of us is shown when we look at Facebook. … What wasn’t publicly known until now is that Facebook actually ran experiments to see how the changes would affect publishers—and when it found that some of them would have a dramatic impact on the reach of right-wing “junk sites,” as a former employee with knowledge of the conversations puts it, the engineers were sent back to lessen those impacts.”
Prisoners are eligible to receive stimulus checks, but prisons aren’t letting them get it. “The possibility of checks for prisoners has been a contentious issue, with the IRS first allowing and then disallowing the payments before a federal judge stepped in late last month to clarify: Prisoners, too, can get paid. But according to attorneys, prisoners, and their advocates, some prison systems appear to be erecting roadblocks to payments approved by Congress and the courts.”
The Trump administration wants to label leading human rights groups “anti-Semitic.” “The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam—are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said. … If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation.”
US intelligence agencies say Iran and Russia are trying to influence the election. “U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be used to endanger the upcoming election.” Yeah, but: “While senior Trump administration officials said this week that Iran has been actively interfering in the presidential election, many intelligence officials said they remained far more concerned about Russia, which in recent days has hacked into state and local computer networks in breaches that could allow Moscow broader access to American voting infrastructure.”
—> The Roundup
That The Atlantic endorsed Joe Biden—or, more precisely, Not Donald Trump—should come as no surprise. But the way The Atlantic endorsed Not Donald Trump still demands to be read and absorbed.
US airlines reported a 70% revenue hit last quarter. That’s a lot.
The good news: Half of those who were laid off during the pandemic have returned to work. The bad news: Only 39% of those still out of work say they think they’ll get their jobs back.
A judge dismissed a third-degree murder charge against the cop who killed George Floyd.
New unemployment claims fell to 787,000 last week.
“According to private polling shared with Intelligencer by Democratic data scientist David Shor, roughly 30 percent of American women under 25 identify as LGBT.”
Trump’s Twitter allegedly got hacked after some guy figured out his password was “maga2020.”
—> Tweet Du Jour
Have a good weekend, everyone. I’ll see you Monday.
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