Our lead story this week sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but sadly, it’s extremely serious. This week in CIB:
- Campaign Watch: Too Many of You Are Voting! Stop It!
- Legislative Watch: Legislating Craziness
- The Other Side: Assault on Clean Energy
Campaign Watch: Too Many of You Are Voting! Stop It!
In a flagrantly political proposal, some legislators are trying to make it harder–much harder–for North Carolina citizens to cast their votes.
Two bills filed last week (HB 451 and SB 428) would eliminate one-stop registration and voting, and cut the early voting period in half (from two weeks to one). (Early voting had already been cut back from three weeks to two.) One-stop and early voting are the key reforms which have been credited in North Carolina for dramatically increasing voter participation in 2008 and 2012. In addition, the House bill would go even further, to ban early voting on Sunday, eliminate straight-ticket voting, repeal public financing for appellate judicial elections, and make those elections partisan again. While making early in-person voting harder, the bill would make mailed absentee voting easier by allowing voters to send in absentee ballot applications using a pre-filled-out form.
During 2012, about 40 percent of the turnout (more than two million voters) came via in-person early voting. Observers note that more Democrats typically use in-person early voting and straight-ticket voting, whereas more Republicans use mailed absentee ballots. Sunday voting “souls to the polls” events organized by many African-American church leaders and community groups also have been particularly popular. Voting rights advocates assert that the partisan motivations of the proposed bills are therefore flagrantly on display. (Both bills are sponsored by Republican legislators and have drawn immediate fierce opposition from Democrats and progressive public interest groups.)
Environmental advocates, including NCLCV, are among the groups disturbed by the proposals. Elimination of one-stop registration and voting, shortening the early voting period, and banning early voting on Sundays in particular would dramatically increase the barriers to voting. Many citizens can have difficulty getting off work and dealing with long lines at the polls on the traditional Tuesday election day. Plus, many voters who have recently moved often fail to be aware of advance registration deadlines, and are turned away from voting at a new place of residence.
To NCLCV in particular, changing the law to make voting more difficult interferes with our mission to increase public participation in holding legislators accountable for their environmental decisions. The NCLCV Foundation last year contacted over 168,000 households to urge them to vote early or by mail. In addition, many are concerned that eliminating judicial contest public financing and returning those races to partisan voting will accelerate a trend toward campaign spending that in effect purchases judicial seats for candidates favored by special interests with the deepest pockets (often the oil industry and other big polluters).
NCLCV executive director Carrie Clark emphasized: “We know that voting is one of the most important things we can do for the environment,” since the legislators we elect shape the laws and the budgets under which our land and wildlife are conserved and air and water pollution controlled–or not.
Democracy NC executive director Bob Hall called the bills “a form of voter fraud” designed to systematically “cheat people who have been able to use the tools of democracy.” NAACP state president, Rev. William Barber, was even more dramatic. “The legislature is trying to crucify voting rights in this state,” he said.
More details and comment can be found here on WRAL and here via NC Policy Watch.
Legislative Watch: Legislating Craziness
Infamous climate-change denier John Droz of the “American Tradition Institute” appears to be the genesis of proposed legislation intended to coerce the Utilities Commission Public Staff into taking positions less open to renewable energy. As previously discussed in CIB, Droz is the non-expert in climate science who is especially active in opposing development of wind energy and claiming that human-influenced climate change isn’t happening.
According to a report by WRAL’s Laura Leslie, HB 820, “Public Staff/Duty to Represent the Public”, was introduced by Droz’s friend Rep. George Cleveland (R-Onslow), following an email exchange between Droz and a Public Staff attorney over wind energy. Droz repeatedly questioned why the Public Staff wasn’t speaking against expansion of wind generation on the ground that it allegedly increases costs to consumers (a claim that in itself is not supported by the facts).
HB 280 would add an explicit prohibition to state law against the Public Staff’s giving “any advice, guidance, or opinion in any proceeding or other matter before the Commission that is not in the interest of the using and consuming public.” The language sounds so vague and uncertain of purpose that members of the House Public Utilities and Energy Committee expressed puzzlement over its motivation, which Cleveland was unable to explain clearly. (Who decides what’s in the interest of the public? What, really, would the language mean in effect?) The bill had actually reached the House floor after coming through Cleveland’s own House Committee on State Personnel before being re-referred to the Utilities committee. After discussion, the bill was tabled in that committee (although it could be revived later).
CIB commends the Public Utilities and Energy Committee for at least putting a hold on passing into law stray tantrums emerging from the cobwebs of Droz’s “think tank”.
For more detail on this story, see here.
The Other Side: Assault on Clean Energy
In a coordinated nationwide assault, groups bankrolled by the oil industry and related dirty energy interests are fighting to roll back progress made toward developing clean, renewable energy. The campaign to repeal REPS (the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard) in North Carolina is just one example of a campaign coordinated by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and pushed by its allies like the John Locke Foundation. According to tracking figures from the North Carolina Solar Center, efforts to repeal these clean energy development laws are under way in more than two dozen states this year.
ALEC is a “free-market” industry group financed largely by special interests which have grown fat from decades of government subsidies and favorable tax breaks, including ExxonMobil, energy conglomerate (a.k.a., oil barons) Koch Industries, and Peabody Energy, called the nation’s largest coal producer. In addition, more than 2,000 state legislators are ALEC members, including a number of prominent leaders within the N.C. General Assembly. (It is no coincidence that there is a great overlap between ALEC members and the targets of campaign largesse from its supporting industries.)
In North Carolina, these attacks are taking the form of the so-called “Affordable and Reliable Energy Act” (SB 365 and HB 298), about which CIB has previously reported. The vocally anti-green policies entity, the John Locke Foundation, is pumping for this retreat from sane development of clean, renewable energy sources in our state.
The good news is that the business community and our state’s legislative leadership are divided on this issue. There’s actually broad recognition that clean energy development is good for jobs and business. Only those dedicated primarily to defending the interests of oil and coal, and the hard-core anti-government ideologues, are beating the drum for these profoundly foolish proposals. The growing clean energy business community is helping fight to maintain the incentives which are giving their industry a foot in the door to growth of renewables.
