Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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4 UCW JANUARY 4-10, 2017 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM An online article published in Slate magazine just before Christmas stated that a group of experts that rates the integrity of elections around the world found that North Carolina can't really be considered a democracy anymore. It cited the findings of the Electoral Integrity Project, a nonpartisan organization that empowers citizen volunteers through education and training, to participate actively in protecting our freedoms and way of life. Its research team is based at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the University of Sydney. The criticism noted that our outgoing Republican governor, Pat McCrory, signed a bill stripping his Democratic successor, Roy Cooper, of certain powers. In a related op-ed piece published in the News & Observer of Raleigh, Andrew Reynolds, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote that North Carolina is the worst state in the U.S. for unfair legislative and congressional districting and also the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the E.I.P. The E.I.P. think tank placed North Carolina alongside the likes of Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone when it comes to governance. North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration that E.I.P actually ranked our state alongside Iran and Venezuela. Ugh! Not good. And, it gets worse. When it comes to the integrity of voting district boundaries, no country has ever received as low a score as North Carolina. "That North Carolina can no longer call its elections democratic is shocking enough, but our democratic decline goes beyond what happens at election time," notes Reynolds. The most respected measures of democracy are those that reflect the fairness and execution of power by those elected to represent the people. The extent to which North Carolina's legislature breaches these principles means our state government can no longer be classified as a full democracy. This should concern all Tar Heel residents. Unresponsive and irresponsible politics perpetrated by reigning Democrats and Republicans cannot escape the fair and equal blame for such outrageous governance. Shame! Shame! Shame! Reynolds observes in his op-ed piece that democracies do not limit their citizens' rights based on their born identities. However, this is exactly what the North Carolina legislature did through House Bill 2 and its attempts to reduce African-American and Latino access to the vote. Professor Reynolds concludes that we need to address the institutional failures that have cost us our democratic ranking – unfair districting, denial of equal access to the vote and the abuse of legislative power. No democracy in the world outside of the U.S. allows elected politicians to draw the lines. Voter registration and poll access should make voting as easy as possible and never be skewed in favor of any one element of society. Elected officials, regardless of their political affiliation, need to follow the core principle of democracy; that is to respect the will of the people. In our America, all true Republicans, Democrats, Independents and even Green Party members need to be fully dedicated and loyal to the inherent democratic principles of our Founding Fathers. The questions that remain are: Where do you stand? Who will be the peacemakers? Who will be the first to set self- interest aside and step up to be the statesmen for fairness, decency, equality and the American way? In North Carolina, from both sides of the aisle, what we know for sure is that "Absolute power corrupts…Absolutely!" Again: Shame! Shame! Shame! Thank you for reading Up & Coming Weekly. PUBLISHER'S PEN North Carolina Democracy? Shame! Shame! Shame! by JEFF THOMPSON STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman Bill@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/EDITOR Stephanie Crider editor@upandcomingweekly.com SENIOR REPORTER Jeff Thompson news@upandcomingweekly.com ART DIRECTOR & GRAPHIC DESIGNER Elizabeth Long art@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS D.G. Martin, Pitt Dickey, Margaret Dickson, John Hood, Erinn Crider, Jim Jones, Shanessa Fenner, Heather Griffiths BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Keri Dickson keri@upandcomingweekly.com SALES ADMINISTRATOR/ DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Laurel Handforth laurel@upandcomingweekly.com ACCOUNTING Paulette Naylor accounting@upandcomingweekly.com MARKETING/SALES Nicki Hart nicki@upandcomingweekly.com Linda McAlister Brown linda@upandcomingweekly.com ––––––––––– Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan Street P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: (910) 484-6200 FAX: (910) 484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a "Quality of Life" publication with local features, news and infor- mation on what's happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly welcomes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for pub- lication consideration, but assumes no respon- sibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distrib- uted at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per person. ©2007 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. Fayetteville's Weather Forecast January 5 Mostly Cloudy January 6 AM Showers January 7 AM Rain/Snow January 8 Rain/Freezing Rain January 9 AM Rain/Ice January 10 Partly Cloudy THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY HIGH 49 HIGH 42 HIGH 43 HIGH 41 HIGH 47 HIGH 51 LOW 32 LOW 28 LOW 30 LOW 30 LOW 33 LOW 36 JEFF THOMPSON, Senior Report- er. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.