A taxpayer-funded political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has concluded that political conditions in North Carolina are comparable to political conditions in totalitarian nations such as Cuba, Venezuela and Iran because Republicans are too politically successful.
The professor, Andrew Reynolds, aired his 936-word grievance last week in The News & Observer, a newspaper out of Raleigh.
North Carolina “can no longer be classified as a full democracy,” Reynolds declares, because the statewide Republican Party has been too successful at winning the state’s winner-take-all elections.
The winner-take-all system — which is excessively common throughout the United States — is a huge problem, Reynolds pontificates, because “one party wins just half the votes but 100 percent of the power.” North Carolina Republicans have won so many elections in recent years that they have “a huge legislative majority” and “absolute veto-proof control.”
The professor blames gerrymandered voting districts in the state for creating “rigged district boundaries” and making state legislators “beholden to their party bosses” and “detached from democratic accountability.”
Reynolds also says North Carolina “can no longer be classified as a full democracy” because of a state transgender bathroom law — commonly called House Bill 2 — which requires people to use public bathrooms aligning with the genitalia with which they were originally born.
There are “an estimated 38,000 transgender Tar Heels,” the professor writes, and “democracies do not limit their citizens’ rights on the basis of their born identities.”
Still further, North Carolina “can no longer be classified as a full democracy,” Reynolds writes, because state lawmakers have attempted to enforce legislation requiring voters to present government-issued photo identifications before casting ballots. Such laws, the professor says, are “targeted attempts to reduce African-American and Latino access to the vote.”
The final argument Reynolds makes is that North Carolina “can no longer be classified as a full democracy” because the state’s Republican-led legislature recently passed several laws designed to undercut the power of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
“When, in response to losing the governorship, one party uses its legislative dominance to take away significant executive power, it is a direct attack upon the separation of powers that defines American democracy,” Reynolds writes. The hastily-passed laws, which some notable state Republicans have decried, leave “Carolina no better than the authoritarian regimes we look down upon,” Reynolds claims. (RELATED: Obama Publishes $7.4 BILLION Worth Of Regulations In One Night)
“We need to put aside the complacent hyperbole and accept that in North Carolina we no longer live in a functioning democracy worth its name,” the professor says. “We have become one of those struggling developing world states that needs to claw its way slowly toward democratic integrity.”
As things stand, Reynolds proclaims, the “overall electoral integrity” of North Carolina is on par with “authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba.” “Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela,” Reynolds instructs.
On his Facebook page, Reynolds has a feature image showing himself in front of an LGBT rainbow flag.
The Facebook groups to which Reynolds belongs include BROS 4 HILLARY, Gay Professionals and 1980s Young Liberals.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill webpage for Reynolds proudly states that he has been “a consultant on issues of electoral and constitutional design” in several countries. Some are genuine democracies. Others, such as Angola, Egypt and Sudan, are autocratic hellholes
A database provided by The News & Observer shows that Reynolds brings home an annual taxpayer-funded salary of $117,000 per year.
By way of comparison, the median household income in North Carolina is $46,869, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
UNC Chapel Hill is famous, of course, because the taxpayer-funded school published — and then deleted — a document entitled “Career corner: Understanding microaggressions” which identified golf outings, Christmas vacations, the word “boyfriend” and any interruption of a woman who is speaking as menacing microaggressions. (RELATED: University Of North Carolina: CHRISTMAS VACATION Is A ‘Microaggression’ Now)
The public school is also famous because it perpetuated a sickening scam involving 18 years of rampant academic fraud. The shocking con allowed dozens of athletes to deliberately enroll in fake classes for which they were awarded passing grades to keep them eligible for UNC’s sports teams. (RELATED: University Of North Carolina Vows: No More Fake Classes For Jocks)
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