Not a constitutional case ... yet
Marcus Kindley, chairman of the Guilford County Republican Party, took the press to task in an N&R op-ed Sunday for making little noise as Democrats in Raleigh circumvent the state constitution.
I think Marcus misstated the facts...
He was writing about the out-of-precinct ballots that have held up a final result in the 2004 state superintendent election as well as the Guilford County commissioners at-large race in which no winner has been declared between Republican Trudy Wade and Democrat John Parks. Wade trails but is trying to have ballots cast out of precinct disallowed. She's holding the seat until everything is decided - which could be quite a while.
Wade and Bill Fletcher, the Republican candidate for superintendent who is making the same case as Wade, won support from the state Supreme Court, which said the questioned ballots were improper. That sparked the General Assembly to pass a bill saying it means for such ballots to be counted. And that legislative action is what Marcus says should have the media howling.
"The Democratic-controlled Senate and House, along with Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, have decided that they don't have to follow our state constitution," he wrote. "I refer, of course, to the recent 5-0 decision made by the N.C. Supreme Court stating that provisional ballots cast outside of the precinct where a voter is registered are in violation of the state constitution and are therefore illegal."
Actually, Marcus did not read the ruling closely enough. The court pointedly did not address the constitutional claims brought by Wade and Fletcher: "we decline to reach plaintiffs' constitutional arguments, as the present case may be resolved on purely statutory grounds." (This is found in the section labeled "In-precinct voting requirement.")
In doing so, the court found that state law itself does not allow out-of-precinct voting. In crafting a new law that says it does, the Legislature, therefore, is not trying to override the constitution. It is trying to negate the court's ruling, however.
But that just leaves the constitutional question for another day. Wade and Fletcher, assuming they end up losing their elections, can sue all over again - and this time the Supreme Court will decide the law's constitutionality.
Marcus also stated that, because most out-of-precinct ballots were cast by Democrats, discarding them would lead to victories by Fletcher and Wade. That is far from certain. In fact, it is mathematically improbable because the number of challenged ballots really isn't great enough to overturn the leads held by Parks in Guilford County and Democratic superintendent candidate June Atkinson statewide.
Will we ever find out for sure? We'll have to wait and see.
Comments (3)
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Thanks, Doug. I was writing a post about Marcus Kindley's column, too, but you did a better job than I would have.
Posted on March 7, 2005 4:59 PM
Ed Cone (here) wants to know why Kindley's piece wasn't fact-checked before publication - which would have helped to prevent readers from being misinformed. What's your take on this? What should a newspaper do, when presented with a guest piece that contains apparent errors? (What would best serve the community?)
Or to look at it differently, what can the community reasonably expect from the newspaper, given that staff resources are not infinite?
These might not be easy questions to answer, but they're important to address.
Posted on March 8, 2005 3:30 PM
Anna,
Thanks for your question.
The short answer is that, in this case, I didn't see Marcus Kindley's article before publication. It's not one of my normal responsibilities to edit that particular page.
More generally, staff limitations prevent detailed fact-checking of every op-ed piece, syndicated column and letter to the editor published. An editor might catch an obvious error of fact, but one who hasn't been following the twists and turns of the Fletcher-Atkinson, Wade-Parks case closely and hadn't read the Supreme Court decision easily could have missed what I regarded as a misstatement of fact in Kindley's article.
Finally, there's the issue of allowing guest writers wide latitude when it comes to expressing their interpretation of facts. Different people can draw very different conclusions from the same set of facts. As editors, we don't want to force writers into an opinion conformity. In this instance, I don't think there was any harm in letting Kindley have his say and then allowing anyone who wanted to respond (including me) have at it.
Posted on March 9, 2005 8:17 AM