Welcome Michelle Burton our guest blogger! Michelle Burton has been a public school library media specialist for 23 years in the state of North Carolina (Alamance, Durham and Wake counties) She believes all students deserve a high quality, well-rounded education and art, music, P.E. and school libraries staffed by highly educated professionals is apart of every child having a sound basic education. Please take time to read her thoughts on the amendments on the 2018 ballot.
The six constitutional amendments that have been placed on the ballot will cause irreparable harm to our state. These amendments would drastically alter the North Carolina constitution forever, and would be almost impossible to change if they are approved. They were written to purposely deceive North Carolinians in handing over power to the North Carolina legislators by stripping any little power the governor has left, taking away the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of North Carolina citizens, and destroy any additional funding public schools and many public services that North Carolinians depend on.
Here is an overview of the six amendments and why you need to vote against all of them.
- Protect the right to hunt and fish: Your right to hunt and fish is not under attack. The sole purpose of this amendment is to get conservative leaning voters to turn out and vote during a midterm election. If this amendment passes there may some harm done with regards to wildlife and our environment.
- Strengthen Protections to Crime Victims: Again, this is another ploy to get more conservative voters out to vote in November. North Carolina already has protections for crime victims in its state laws. Many people do not know that this amendment is being bankrolled by a California billionaire and if this amendment passes there will be unintended consequences with regard to people being treated fairly in court and having due process.
- Reduce the income tax cap to 7 percent: This amendment will benefit wealthy people so they don’t have to pay income taxes. If this amendment is passed, sales taxes will go up, property taxes will go up, fees for car registrations and licenses will go up. This will be totally regressive, affecting low income and middle income people. This amendment will decimate public education, roads, health care and low wealth counties would not keep up with the cost of taking care of their communities and their citizens.
- Change the process for fulfilling judicial vacancies: Right now, Gov. Cooper, who is a Democrat, has the authority to appoint judges. This amendment would give the authority to the legislature and the legislature is presently dominated by Republicans. Even two of our former Republican governors, Jim Martin and Pat McCrory, said this was a bad idea and have come out against it.
- Establish an eight-member board of Ethics and Elections Enforcement: This amendment will take the authority away from the governor, who is presently a Democrat, to have control over elections in the state and giving it to the legislature. This will make the elections board four Democrats and four Republicans. If this amendment is passed nothing will get resolved with the elections board and major gridlock will occur. All five former governors, two who are Republican, have come out against this amendment.
- Require Voter ID: All of thee above are bad, but this one is really bad. This law will disenfranchise thousands of North Carolinians from voting because they don’t have proper identification. We as voters are suppose to decide on this amendment without knowing what type of ID would be required. The legislature said they would come back in a special session in December and make that decision. But we don’t know what ID the legislature will require citizens must have to vote.
Vote against all six constitutional amendments on November 6. #NixallSix.