Winston-Salem City Council passes resolution against Citizens United

Councilman James Taylor greets resolution supporters.

Winston-Salem City Council voted 5-2 on Monday night to approve a resolution opposing the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.

A compromise between Councilman James Taylor Jr., the resolution's sponsor, and Councilman Dan Besse, passed with little discussion following about three months of shuttling to and from committee and wrangling over language and intent. The changes were made to address reservations expressed by Besse and garner his vote for the majority.

"When you start to see federally, on the state level and even locally in other cities that money was being placed over the people, I think this resolution sent a clear signal to everyone in our city that we won't put money over people, that people matter," Taylor said.

In addition to Taylor and Besse, the resolution garnered support from council members Vivian Burke, Denise D. Adams and Derwin Montgomery. Robert Clark and Wanda Merschel voted against the measure. Councilwoman Molly Leight, who had earlier expressed support for the resolution, was absent from the meeting.

With approval of the resolution, Winston-Salem joins Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, Asheville and Chapel Hill in opposing the controversial Supreme Court ruling, which allowed so-called "super PACs" to spend unlimited cash in media advertising buys to influence elections as long as the expenditures are not coordinated with any candidate. 

The Winston-Salem council's resolution expresses opposition to "the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission regarding constitutional rights for corporations."

The compromise resolution struck language calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to overturn Citizens United, calling instead "for the reversal" of the decision without naming any specific mechanism. But the title of the resolution still includes a reference to a Constitutional amendment.

To appease Besse the resolution also removed language stating, erroneously, that the Citizens United decision "declared corporations to be persons."

The final obtained by Besse removed the language articulating the stance that "only human beings, not corporations, are endowed with constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment," and avers instead that "the rights of corporations and other artificial beings under the First Amendment may be restricted to a greater degree and in a different manner than those of natural persons."

Supporters celebrated approval of the resolution at Foothills Brewing after the council meeting. Kim Porter with Occupy Winston-Salem said the resolution would not have passed without help from several organizations, most notably Democracy North Carolina, whose personnel helped gather more than 1,300 signatures on a petition.

"James Taylor has worked very diligently with residents of the city and different groups involved in this process," Porter said. "Many people told us that a corporate town like Winston-Salem would never pass a resolution against Citizens United. I'm glad we proved them wrong." 

Report highlights potential influence of Latino vote

Democracy NC released a new report today about the latent electoral power of Latino voters.

The report, Snapshot of Latino Voters in North Carolina, estimates that there are 100,000 eligible but unregistered Latino voters in North Carolina. In a state carried by Barack Obama in 2008 by only 14,000 votes, the implications are obvious: The Hispanic vote could swing the election.

The opportunity might be particularly pronounced in Forsyth County, which has a higher number of Hispanic residents than neighboring Guilford, but fewer registered Latino voters. Of course, it’s impossible to know whether the lower registration rate in Forsyth County reflects the number of Latino residents who are undocumented and ineligible to vote.  

Latinos would seem to be a natural constituency for Obama’s reelection efforts in North Carolina. The report cites polling finding that Latinos favor a more activist government, access to healthcare guaranteed by the government, and candidates that take supportive rather than hostile stances on immigration. 

The report says that Latinos have growing, if unrealized electoral clout in North Carolina. The Latino, or Hispanic population doubled to more than 830,000 from 2000 to 2010. And as of May 8, 2012, the report found “there were 91,600 self-identified Latino registered voters, representing a 35% increase over 2008.” 

Turnout among all demographic groups, but particularly Latinos is the wild card. The year 2008 set a record for voter turnout, with 72 percent of registered blacks and 69 percent of whites voting, while only 60 percent of Latinos voted. 

Not in the report: There’s some evidence that the Obama campaign is making an effort to reach Latinos in North Carolina. The campaign recently opened an office in Sanford, the seat of Lee County, where Latinos comprise more than 14 percent of the population. 

But the Democracy NC report is more concerned with the potential for Latinos to develop a political voice to advance their interests than activating them as a voting bloc to help one or the other presidential contenders. The report recommends 

Connect with Latino voters through community-based organizations. Too often, efforts to engage Hispanic voters wax and wane with the election season. Engaging community-based organizations in year-round voter registering and ongoing civic education is the most important way to build on existing relationships within the community and ensure that voting becomes an important habit and regular activity.

 

Another recommendation: 

Focus on registration and mobilization. The potential power promised by Latino population growth is not currently reflected at the polls, in part because Latinos register and vote at lower rates than other voters. Although low rates of citizenship, socioeconomic status, and age can account for some of this gap, experts suggest that increasing voter registration and GOTV efforts are the most important ways to close it.

Elections board wants to maintain early-voting sites in Forsyth

Forsyth County Board of Elections members Jonathan Dills (center) and Linda Sutton voted to send new voter registration cards to voters in Precinct 504, whose polling location is being moved.

The Democratic chair of the Forsyth County Board of Elections says she will push to maintain the same number of early-voting sites for the upcoming presidential election as in the watershed election year of 2008.

“As long as we can match 2008, whether people are coming out for or against Obama, either way it’s going to be a heavy turnout,” Chair Linda Sutton said after a meeting of the local board yesterday. “I want everybody to have an opportunity to vote and to have as many sites as we did in 2008.”

She added that some voters are highly motivated to turn out to vote against Obama, while the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte could boost turnout among Democrats.  

The Forsyth County Board of Elections operated 14 early-voting sites over a period of two weeks during the run-up to Election Day in 2008. A total of 81,062 people participated in early voting in that election. Altogether, 167,871 registered voters in Forsyth County voted in the 2008 general election, resulting in a turnout of 75.6 percent. 

Elections Director Rob Coffman told Sutton and Republican board member Jonathan Dills that he will bring the board a recommendation for the number and location of early-voting sites, along with the days and hours of operation. Dills, who is the only Republican on the three-member board, said he expected to be out-voted by his Democratic colleagues. Michael Flatow, the second Democrat on the board, was absent from the meeting because of a death in the family. 

It remains unclear how many early-voting sites the county can afford to operate. Coffman said in an interview before the meeting that unlike 2008, the Republican-controlled NC General Assembly did not allocate state funding this year to obtain a federal matching grant available under the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA. As a consequence, this year there is no federal or state funding available to pay for additional voting sites. Another consequence of the General Assembly’s inaction, Coffman said, is that the county will have to pick up the tab for maintaining and licensing voting machines this year at a cost of $67,000 or $68,000. 

“We’re going to have to self-fund [early-voting sites],” Coffman said. “We have to look at our dollars and see what we can do. There are some creative things we can do. We could have same number of locations but maybe reduce the hours. Our main expense is staff. The board does have some flexibility.” 

In addition to chairing the Forsyth County Board of Elections, Sutton is a field organizer for Democracy North Carolina, a statewide election group that has advocated for early voting, often putting itself at odds with Republican lawmakers intent on scaling back opportunities to vote. Democracy North Carolina recently asked supporters to contact lawmakers to urge them to release the HAVA funds. 

Coffman and the two board members agreed that the board should select sites that were popular during early voting in 2008. Coffman cited Polo Park Recreation Center in Winston-Salem. Dills mentioned Kernersville Senior Center and Clemmons Library. 

In other action, Sutton and Dills approved 2008 absentee ballots for the July 17 runoff election and disapproved three ballots that were not signed or completed. Sutton expressed surprise at how many absentee ballots were received. 

Coffman attributed the relatively high number of absentee ballots to people who voted absentee in the first primary election checking off a request for absentee ballots in a second election. He said his office fielded phone calls from voters who were confused about why they had received the second absentee ballot who apparently didn’t remember that they had made the request through the check-off. 

Sutton lamented that many voters are not aware that a second runoff election will be held on July 17. The board members and the director discussed various methods of publicizing the election, but took no official action. 

A runoff is held when no candidate in the primary receives more than 40 percent of the vote and the candidate receiving the second highest numbers of votes requests a second election. 

Voters who selected a Republican ballot in the primary will have the opportunity to vote for Dan Forest or Tony Gurley for lieutenant governor, Richard Morgan or Mike Causey for NC commissioner of insurance, Kenn Gardner or Richard Alexander for NC secretary of state, and John Tedesco or Richard Alexander for NC superintendent of public instruction. Those who selected the Democratic ballot will be able to vote in only one run-off: a contest between Marlowe Foster and John C. Brooks for NC commissioner of labor. 

Coffman told the two board members that the polling site for Precinct 504 will be moved because of the closure of Hill Middle School. The new voting site will be the Sprague Street Recreation Center (map). Coffman said the board would mail out notifications to all voters in the precinct, who number about a thousand. Sutton and Dills also voted to send new voter registration cards to the voters. 

Dills said that if the board did not send out new cards, “they would always have that card reminding them of the wrong location.” 

Coffman and Dills agreed that the cost of printing and mailing the cards would likely be $600 or $700. Coffman said he thought he could find money in the new 2012-2013 budget to cover the expense.

Young Greensboro natives come home to mobilize black voters

Twenty-three-year-old James Burroughs stood at the podium last night at New Goshen United Methodist Church in Greensboro and addressed some 50 people at the inaugural meeting of Democracy at Home.

A nonpartisan organization, Democracy at Home is dedicated to registering voters and getting them to the polls, along with connecting them with the issues in their lives so that they can make meaningful choices in the voting booth. The people filling the pews were almost exclusively African-American, and so in leadership and constituency the nascent organization is implicitly about black political empowerment.

The phenomenal turnout that catapulted Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, the sense of complacency in Greensboro’s black electorate the following year that resulted in the unseating of Mayor Yvonne Johnson, the emergence of the Tea Party movement and the racialized media frenzy that led to the firing of Shirley Sherrod – all these sounded as galvanizing calls throughout the meeting.

“The main thing is I see a lot of my friends in Greensboro went away and stayed away,” said Burroughs, a NC State University alum who worked at a biotech company and volunteered on political campaigns before returning to Greensboro to pursue graduate studies in philosophy at UNCG this fall, after the meeting. “I felt like I could really help our community. I was disappointed with Yvonne Johnson’s loss last year. I felt someone like myself who knows this community could really make a difference. I feel that our community is losing its voice. Our battle didn’t end in 2008.”

Burroughs, who is executive director of Democracy at Home, urged those in attendance to make sure their family members and friends are registered to vote. He said his organization plans to hold voter registration drives, town-hall meetings on local issues and candidate forums, and provided a phone number for any elderly or disabled person who would need a free ride to the polls.

Linda Sutton, an organizer with Democracy North Carolina, an allied statewide nonpartisan group, alluded to the conservative rhetoric of the Tea Party.

“I laugh every time I hear that we’ve got to take our country back,” she said. “What do they want to take our country back to? The last 10 years? Back to the forties and fifties? We built this country. Before we were here, the Indians were here. I have to keep it nonpartisan, but you understand what’s at stake. There are forces that want to take us back to before Brown vs. Board.”

Later, Sutton appropriated the “take our country back” rallying cry for her own uses. (It was also frequently heard on the campaign trail during Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency in 2008.)

“You know why Barack had a hard time getting healthcare passed?” Sutton asked. “You would think he wouldn’t have any problem because he had the majority. But half of the Democrats were taking money from the insurance and medical industry. Some of them were kind of hesitant. That’s why we need to take our government back from the special interests and corporations.

"Our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people," she continued. "It didn’t say of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. We’re the people. It’s like fingers in a hand. When I touch your face with my finger you might barely feel it. But when I put them together into a fist, it’s another thing. We have a lot of power when we come together.”

Without mentioning candidates by name or referencing their party, Burroughs highlighted Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul’s statement advocating the repeal of parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, pledges by Republican Congressional candidates such as North Carolina’s Richard Burr to repeal or amend healthcare reform legislation, and the efforts of the new majority on the Wake County School Board to dismantle the current school assignment plan emphasizing socio-economic diversity in favor of neighborhood schools.

“If there are people who are saying they’re going to get in office and vote for things that are not to your benefit,” Burroughs said, “then you have to vote for the other person.”

Only one candidate appeared at the forum. Marcus Brandon is the Democratic nominee for NC House District 60, which covers south Greensboro, central High Point and a swath of southern Guilford County. Brandon’s Republican opponent is Lonnie Wilson of High Point.

Brandon cited the electoral loss last year of Yvonne Johnson, the city’s first black mayor, in the nonpartisan Greensboro City Council election, and warned that Democrats could lose control of the NC House – and control of redistricting – if his constituency remains apathetic.

“Ask the people in Wake County: ‘Did it change?’ It did,” Brandon said. “Ask the people in Greensboro: ‘Did it change?’ It did. It does make a difference that you vote. We are at a crucial turning point this year. We could lose control of the House. Then we’re going to be yelling in the street, protesting about what the House did and did not do.”

The fight over what some call school re-segregation in Wake County has been part of Burroughs’ exposure to the more energized and unified civil rights activism in the Triangle. Like Burroughs, 24-year-old Kristen Jeffers attended NC State and recently returned to her native Greensboro. Jeffers is the executive director of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network Triad and a board member of Democracy at Home.

Burroughs’ political outlook has also been shaped by his experience working on successful campaigns to elect Democrats Kay Hagan to the US Senate and Cora Cole-McFadden to the Durham City Council. Compared to Raleigh and Charlotte, Burroughs said he finds his hometown lacking in civic mobilization.

“In Raleigh and Durham, you see older people and younger people coming together to work on issues,” he said. “Here in Greensboro, it’s splintered. One group here and one group here. But we’re not working together. That’s why Democracy at Home is a coalition. It can encompass a lot of different groups."

Darryl Hunt to appear at Greensboro community event

Darryl Hunt, who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the murder of copy editor Deborah Sykes, will appear at the Hive in Greensboro for a screening of the documentary movie The Trials of Darryl Hunt, on Thursday. Billed as a “community movie night,” the event is sponsored by Democracy North Carolina, NC Occupational Safety and Health, Food Not Bombs and the Spirit of the Sit-In Movement Initiative. Dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. and the film screens at 8:30 p.m.