In our opinion: It's up to us; our time is coming

Thomas Mills, the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC, a website of commentary and analysis about our state, believes Republican members of the North Carolina General Assembly are the inspiration behind MAGA. “In North Carolina, we had Trumpism before Trump,” Mills recently wrote.

Perhaps the most enduring stain of MAGA’s dark legacy nationwide is its attack on voting rights. We have the Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly to thank for that.

The MAGA majority in our General Assembly began its crusade against democracy in 2013, when it pushed through legislation requiring voter ID, reducing the number of days for early voting, ending same-day registration, and expanding the authority of election observers to challenge voters. The courts struck down many of the bill’s provisions, but several of them have slithered back to daylight since then.

That was just the beginning. The GOP’s next goal was to take over the state and county boards of elections. Shortly before Roy Cooper’s first term as governor began in 2016, Republicans voted to strip his authority to appoint members to election boards. The state’s Supreme Court found that law unconstitutional.

Eight years later, when Josh Stein took his oath of office, the GOP, now fully merged with MAGA, tried again. This time – with no interference from those pesky courts – MAGA passed a law transferring the governor’s powers to appoint State Board of Elections members to the state auditor. The law also transferred the appointment power of each county’s board of elections chairperson from the governor to the state auditor.

Since Dave Boliek, the state auditor, is a Trump-loyalist Republican, MAGA now has total authority over North Carolina’s élection infrastructure. Boliek lost little time in assuming control. He appointed political cronies to the panel instead of elections professionals. Republican county board chairs appointed by Boliek allegedly used undue influence to shorten early voting periods and shut down select polling sites – a naked attempt to make it more difficult for students and communities of color to exercise their fundamental right to vote. A Boliek lieutenant recently lost his job for his overt arm-twisting of elections officials in several counties.  

But the NC Republicans – eager to continue being one of the nation’s most MAGA-ist organizations in politics – still aren’t done. Just days ago, the state Senate passed a bill to

• Cut early voting for primaries and special elections from 17 days to just 10

• Allow candidates to challenge “eligible” votes after election day if they don’t like the results

• Force the Division of Motor Vehicles to hand over voters’ full Social Security numbers to the State Board of Elections

• Prohibit voters from casting ballots if they’ve been flagged by unreliable databases maintained by the federal government’s Department of Homeland Security 

• Give the state auditor broad discretion to audit county election systems

All this is bad news for democracy and the right to vote. But each of these onerous measures can be reversed if we come to the defense of our state and its constitution. On Election Day, Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents can and must turn out in overwhelming numbers to reject our MAGA-infested General Assembly in record numbers, starting with the defeat of Brunswick County’s own incumbents. 

Brunswick County’s Democratic candidates have broad appeal, core competencies and a list of proposals that will directly benefit Brunswick County residents. MAGA favors culture warriors as their standard bearers, but Democrats in our county and throughout the state have fielded candidates with serious positions on economic, quality of life, and fundamental rights issues that democracy-loving voters can support.

In less than 100 days, we can restore the rule of law, uplift our communities, and protect our right to vote. If North Carolina was the birthplace of MAGA, Democrats here can showcase its defeat.

It’s up to us. Our time is coming.