ON VOTER SUPPRESSION:

After the election in 2012, North Carolina enacted what many observers have called the most restrictive voting laws in the country, laws that were deliberately constructed to disenfranchise people of color. The intellectual cover for these laws is that they are an effort to counter voter fraud. The impact of actual fraud has been negligible, as many independent watchdog groups and government agencies have reported. There will always be a tiny amount of inconsistency, and yes, a few people may fraudulently vote. But these numbers represent the tiniest, statistically insignificant percentage of all votes cast.

Now, North Carolina governor Pat McCrory and his legal team are filing challenges based on supposed fraud in over half of the state's counties. With Roy Cooper up by thousands of votes, why are they wasting our time with what, even if they win every single challenge, is an effort that cannot change the overall results? Because sowing doubt in the credibility of elections in general gives state GOP leaders continued cover to support the suppression of voters, which, sadly, our state seems bent on continuing. I hope that legal challenges against these onerous laws prevail. It is important to let our voices be heard about this, because above all McCrory and his Republican allies in the state want to sow confusion and discord. The impending recount that is likely because the vote still lies under the 10,000 threshold, while certainly legal, means that the Cooper transition, and whatever work it will be able to accomplish, will be hamstrung for months. This is pure and deliberate obstructionism.

North Carolina's embrace of anti-democratic voting laws is part of a national trend. Chipping away at the hard-earned rights of minority voters is seen by many Republicans as the only way to stem the tide of changing demographics that is certainly not good for them. Donald Trump infamously made fraud a centerpiece of his campaign, particularly when he was losing in the polls. He claimed that it was part of a conspiracy of certain media outlets and Hillary Clinton who were colluding to enable "inner-city" residents (we can all read that code) to vote multiple times, to name one ludicrous example. 

That brings us to the appointment of Jeff Sessions to lead the Justice Department. This is a man who has fought against civil rights his entire career, who has publicly stated that the 1965 Voting Rights Act is "an intrusive law." We can never forget the defining moment in the history of voting rights: the brutal attack on John Lewis and several hundred other protestors on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Mr. Sessions' home state of Alabama. Outrage at this attack precipitated the eventual passage of the historic and sweeping protection of all citizens' right to vote. Mr. Sessions' discrediting of this historic legislation puts him firmly on the side of those who stood in the way of and beat protestors on that day in March, 1965.

The right to vote is, along with free speech, at the very core of our freedoms. It is the vehicle through which we, the people, select the representatives who will carry out our wishes in government. How a major political party can defend the suppression of these rights is beyond baffling: it is sickening, particularly given the fact that the struggle to gain these rights is within the living memory of so many heroic cvil rights pioneers. Voter suppression, including literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright intimidation, were the centerpiece of the Jim Crow South. Disenfranchised people were defenseless against all manner of degrading, humiliating, racist, and utterly constraining laws that segregated everything from work to water fountains to marriage. Allowing Mr. Sessions to head the agency that is supposed to ensure equal justice for all Americans is truly frightening, and his and Mr. Trump's attack on voting rights take us right back to the 1960s. Given that we have a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., hasn't history settled this score already? To bring it back home, Pat McCrory's desperate and misguided attempt to hide behind the red herring of voter fraud ties him to the ignominious history of racial segregation and bigotry with which our country so desperately needs to come to terms.