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it is Tuesday, it is twelve o'clock noon, and so
it's time to chat with Andrew Dunn. He is the
publisher of Long Leave Politics and a contributing columnist over
at the Charlotte Observer. But we do not hold that
against him. Andrew. Welcome to the show, sir.
Speaker 1: How are you.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm fantastic, great to be back with you.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, glad you had some time today again for us,
We appreciate it. You got a bunch of different posts
that are out there. So let's start with your piece
that appeared in the McClatchy Papers, News and Observer Charlotte Observer.
And this is about everybody's favorite state aid agency to hate,
the DMV. You say, in a partisan political climate, the
DMV is one of the few things everybody agrees is broken,
which is what makes Governor Josh Stein's new appointment to
lead the agency so revealing. Okay, so who is this guy,
Paul Tyne and why is this revealing?
Speaker 3: As you say, Yeah, so, Republican lawmakers have been highly
critical of Wayne Goodwin, who's been running the DMV for
a couple of years now, ended up pushing him to
step down and not try to get reappointed. And so
the Secretary of Transportation he was going around telling reporters that,
you know, they were looking to bring in a new
DMV commissioner who had business experience, who's going to shake
things up, fix all these problems. But then Josh Stein
ended up appointing Paul Kyne, who is a former state lawmaker.
He runs an insurance agency out on the outer banks.
I don't see anything wrong with him as a person.
I'm sure he's a nice guy. I've never spoken to him,
but he's definitely not you know, a retail business leader
who's going to come in and shake things up. You know,
when I see that pick, what I see is someone
who's going to be able to manage the political relationship,
and what I see from Josh Stein is him basically saying,
I'm not going to do anything with this. I can't
fix it. We're just going to let Republicans, you know,
the State Auditor Dave Bullock and the General Assembly run
the show here and Paul Tyne is kind of going
to be my go between two that has credibility with
the General Assembly and is on my side.
Speaker 2: Which it kind of makes some sense from a not
just a political strategy standpoint, but also I guess pragmatically,
because the legislature is going to be the body that
is going to greenlight any funds necessary to do whatever
renovation needs to be done inside the DMV.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean, honestly, this might be close to
the best case scenario in our current landscape. I mean,
like in a pie in the sky world, it wouldn't
be great if we had a super confident, successful businessman
who would come in and reshape the DMV like that
would be fantastic. But in this environment, I just don't
see that happening. So I don't think it's worth Josh
Stein getting getting in a fight over a turf battle
over who gets to fix a DMV, this might actually
be the best way to actually bring about change.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the right politics is the right policy and it's
the right thing to do. And so, yeah, if you've
got a guy that plays well with Republicans, you put
him in charge and you let the Republicans sort of
lead the way and he can implement. And if you
just take a hands off approach, if you're steying and
things do improve, then you get to claim credit. And
you know, the North Carolina media is going to give
Josh Stein all the credit in the world if he
is able to reduce the wait.
Speaker 3: Times, of course, but I'm much more concerned about things
actually getting better for people in North Carolina. You know,
I was just on the DMB website the other day
trying to get an appointment and there are zero appointments
anywhere in the state of North Carolina over the next
ninety days, which is just completely absurd.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I had to drive.
Speaker 2: I had to renew mine and that's a whole other story,
Like because I when I moved, my address did not
exist because it was a newly built house in a neighborhood,
and so I had to wait for all of the
systems to get updated with the new address and everything.
So I had to go down and show the DMV
my proof of you know, home purchase, like this property
does exist. Well, they took my photo, right, I got
the real ID at the time. I did all of that,
and then I get a letter like within eight months
or so that says I got to renew my license.
I said, I just did, and they're like, no, no,
that was a duplicate way. Why is that a duplicate license? Like, oh,
that only counts as a duplicate I said, I got
a new picture taken and everything, a new address, and
they confirmed it was me. I didn't take the eye test.
They didn't give me the eye test, so it doesn't
count as a renewal. So I had to go one
hundred miles up north towards Hickory for the only appointment
that I could find to get the real ID and
get the get the renewal. It's yeah, it's absolutely absurd,
and Mechlimber County is among the worst as I understand it.
People just waiting in line for hours on end and
not even getting in. Then just you wait for five
hours and you don't even get in, and the government
forces everybody to go to these agencies. So everybody has
this up close personal experience with their government and it's
not it's not pleasant.
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe this is not at all.
Speaker 3: You know, and I'm old enough to remember when you
would just walk in and they would actually print your
lescens for you right there. But those days are long gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So maybe, as you say, appointing a
politically acceptable middleman, let the General Assembly and the State
Auditor drive the process and hope that it's enough to
make progress. Or here's the other part of it is,
you can shift the blame. If it doesn't work out,
then you can blame the legislature and the state auditor.
So politically, it seems pretty smart for Stein to have
gone this direction.
Speaker 1: We'll see if it works out for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's hoping.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Next up, Phil Berger, most powerful legislator in the state
of North Carolina, and he has now started rolling out
endorsements from allies, which you point out this is usually
the time in the political calendar where you're working on
budgets and legislation. You're not out campaigning at this point.
But you say, Burger is not treating this like a
typical off year, So why is that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's what got me started thinking about this
when I saw all those endorsements roll out, and then
you know, it's way early in the cycle for that
sort of thing to happen. Your listeners may may or
may not be familiar with this, but Rockingham County Sheriff
Sam Page has announced that he's going to challenge Phil
Berger for his Senate seat in twenty twenty six. Also
a really early announcement from the sheriff, but he's been
thinking about this for a long time. And you know,
on its face, you wouldn't think that Phil Berger, with
all his power in the state of North Carolina, would
have anything to worry about. But when you dive into
the data, he actually does have a problem there. You know,
Sheriff Sam Page is extremely popular in Rockingham County. You know,
he doesn't have great name id outside of Rockingham County.
You know, he ran for lieutenant governor two years ago
and didn't do very well statewide. I think he came
in fourth or fifth place in an eleven person field,
but he dominated in Rockingham County. People love him there.
It's really hard to kind of gauge how he would
fare in a in a head to head battle against Burger,
but there are some signs that that he could give
Burger a run for his money. Neither one has really
faced much opposition, which makes it tough, you know, but
in when they're running unopposed, you know, Sam Page gets
seventy five percent of the vote and Burger gets, you know,
sixty percent of the vote, and it's hard to say,
you know, hard to say when you know what that
means when they're actually head to head. But on its face,
those are those are warm signs for Burger, and it
sounds like from how he's acting right now, that he's
taking it extremely seriously.
Speaker 2: Didn't Sam Page run for lieutenant governor? Who Wasn't he
sort of talked out of running against Burger? I think
that was the rumor that he was going to run
against Burger, but then he got talked into running for
lieutenant governor instead.
Speaker 1: Is that? Is there anything to that that you know of?
Speaker 3: That's my best guess, you know, I don't have any
heart evidence that that's what happens, but I would say
with ninety nine percent certainty that that's what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then comes the the casino issue where Phil Burger
makes this deal to bring casino gambling to four different
places across the state, Rockingham County being one of them.
And I heard the reasons for it and all that,
and it put a lot of Republicans in an awkward
position because they did not want casino gambling in North Carolina.
But Phil Berger was pushing it, and he is very powerful.
Sam Page was one of the only Republicans that I
saw consistently hammering away at Phil Burger on this. How
does that play back in their district?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. I mean, I think
the Republican opposition to it was pretty broad. There's a
lot of folks in the Republican caucus who are very
uneasy about expanding casino gambling. But you're right, you know,
nobody was coming out vocally against except for Sam Page.
But you know the fact that it didn't make it
into the budget because there wasn't enough Republican votes kind
of tells you everything you need to know there. And
I think maybe if the process had gone a different way,
casinos would have been more well received. If you know,
Burger and other Republicans in that area kind of laid
the groundwork for it, you know, maybe argument for it,
took it slow, did public hearings, all that sort of
thing that you typically associate with a controversial political issue.
But it really seemed like Burger wanted to just kind
of ram it through. I'm not quite sure what the
thought process was there. It really seems like kind of
an unusual political misstep for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you also point out something that I think a
lot of people overlook, which is that when you are
a leader in a legislative body, you're going around and
doing a lot of other stuff. And you point out,
you know, he's built this political machine, he directs it,
but he also is he he's got a lot on
his plate, He's going different places. National level, it's even worse,
and it is very easy for people that rise to
those positions to lose touch with their local district. And
I think there are examples of it. What was this
Eric Canter right up in Virginia who got beat by
David Bratt just out of the blue. And I think
that's part of the reason why sometimes that happens.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, And we're in a political environment right now
where there's a very strong anti incumbent sentiment, you know,
both on the left and the right, but I would
say especially among Republicans, and I don't think Berger has
kind of adjusted his political calculus to adapt to that.
Speaker 2: Andrew Dunn, publisher of long Leaf Politics. You could check
out the website longleafpol dot com. Also you can read
his work at The Charlotte Observer. Andrew, thanks so much, man,
have a great week. We'll see you next Tuesday.
Speaker 3: So good.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you.
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o'clock we'll be chatting with TJ.
Speaker 1: Ritchie.
Speaker 2: He is the newly named host of a newly created
show coincidentally called The TJ Ritchie Show. It's a mystery
how he got the job, and that's that's going to
be seven to nine pm weekdays here on WBT. But
we'll be talking with him at one o'clock. And then
at one point thirty we got Joe Bruno from WSOCTV
to talk about paying off our police chief because his
feelings were hurt.
Speaker 1: I think okay.
Speaker 2: A bill filed in the North Carolina House would extend
driver's license expiration dates. So we're going to get an
extension if you haven't, which I I have missed. I
took a day off of work to drive an hour
up towards Tickery to get my license renewed. But now
under this bill, House Bill eight twenty one, which already
received approval by the House Transportation Committee, it would establish
a temporary moratorium on the expiration of certain Class C
driver licenses in North Carolina. This is due to the
long wait times at all of the offices across the
entire state. I got a message here from Sherry to
Pete at the petecalnershow dot com. A relative had an
appointment for this week, approximately one hour from her home.
She received an email yesterday telling her appointments were overbooked,
her appointment was canceled and she would need to reschedule
through the website. As your guest Andrew Dunn just mentioned,
and anybody who has tried to get an appointment knows
it's almost impossible to get and appointment. Yeah, it is ridiculous.
There are some hacks. I went over these. A couple
of weeks ago. One of them is the midnight hack
or the twelve am hack, which is the appointments open
up at twelve midnight on the computer on the website.
So if you are so, if you you know, set
your alarm, wake up, or stay up and get online,
you may be able to find some slots right at
twelve o'clock in the morning. The bill extends the validity
of Class C driver's licenses for up to two years
beyond their expiration date. However, the extension does not apply
to licenses that are currently canceled, revoked, or suspended, nor
to real ID compliant licenses that have been valid for
eight years or more. So if you have the real
ID and you have to renew it, you cannot get
the two year extension. It would be active upon the
bill becoming low law. The law would only be in
effect through December thirty one, twenty twenty seven. In March,
North Carolina's DMV chief Wayne Goodwin announced he would not
seek to keep his post, but he indicated that he
would remain in his one hundred and sixty three thousand
dollars annual position until a replacement is found. During his tenure,
he did try to address efficiency issues through Saturday office
operations and self serve kiosks and grocery stores. However, twenty
twenty four turned out to be a difficult year for
him and the DMV due to service delays and contract issues.
Back in March, lawmakers held hearings focused on appointment scheduling
and customer wait times, and in June, the DMV came
under fire after state ID delays reached six weeks instead
of the standard fifteen days, which Goodwin attributed to vendor problems.
All right, if you're listening to this show, you know
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All right, So I think this election is finally over,
I mean the last election.
Speaker 1: I think it may be over.
Speaker 2: Guys, eight, No, eight, hang on, we still have like
a week, okay. A federal judge has ordered the North
Carolina State Board of Elections to just go ahead and
certify the results of that state Supreme Court race between
Democrat Alison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin, and to certify Riggs,
the Democrat, as the winner in the election. The decision
rejects ballot challenges from Republican from the Republican Party and
the candidate Griffin. US Chief District Judge Richard Myers, a
Trump appointment, placed a one week hold on his decision though,
just in case Griffin wants to appeal, which I'm pretty
sure he's going to. I have no idea, I have
no inside knowledge on that. I'm just pretty sure he's
going to because everybody's been appealing every single thing in
this case the whole time, So why would it stop now.
The judge rejected the state Supreme Court decision from last
month that put about seventeen hundred, well between seventeen hundred
and fifty seven hundred ballots from the fall election in question. Okay,
the state Supreme Court ruling did that. We went over
this at the time, and the state's highest court endorsed
what they call a cure process, in other words, a
remedy of fix on how to deal with these disputed ballots.
Most of the ballots that we're talking about were tied
to overseas voters who did not provide photo ID. I
went over the ins and outs of this again when
the Supreme Court made its decision. There's a smaller number
of ballots that involved the never residents. These are people
that have never lived in North Carolina for whatever reason,
and like maybe they're kids of you know, people working
overseas or something or in the military, so they were
born over there, but they were American citizens. And so
they then turn eighteen, they can register to vote, and
they don't live here, they never have lived here.
Speaker 1: But what address do they put down?
Speaker 2: They're an American citizen, their parents are from North Carolina,
so they put their parents' address from North Carolina in
And they were never a resident, and so they have
to check a box that says have you ever been
a resident? And they say no, and those votes are
challenged as well because they are never residents. The decision
preserves the Democrats seven hundred and thirty four vote lead
over Republican Jefferson Griffin. There were more than five and
a half million votes Cast Carolina Journal from the opinion,
and I've read most of the opinion, it was like
seventy pages, says. The Court wishes to make clear that
this case is not about the prerogative of North Carolina
courts to interpret North Carolina law without question. Those courts
are the principal expositors of state law. This case is
also not about North Carolina's primacy to establish rules for
future state elections. It may do so, okay, So if
the state wants to make laws for elections, they can
do that. Rather, he says, this case concerns whether the
federal Constitution, not the state, but the federal Constitution permits
a state to alter the rules of an election after
the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a
select group of voters, and in so doing treat those
voters differently than other similarly situated individuals. I think this
is partly because some of the challenges when were directed
at ballots that came from certain counties and not statewide,
and so you could have people that also did not
provide a photo ID, but did not live in one
of the challenged counties, and they weren't challenged, and so
their votes got to count. There was no challenge against them.
They don't have to fix their ballots. This case is
also about whether a state may redefine its class of
eligible voters but offer no process to those who may
have been misclassified as ineligible. To this court, the answer
to each of those questions is new. The judge, in
the introduction of his ruling also wrote, it's important to
understand who cast ballots in the election and under what rules.
For example, thousands of North Carolina voters cast absentee ballots
from overseas. Many of these folks serve in the military
or are in the face family of someone who does.
Others may be missionaries. Still more are temporarily working or
pursuing an education abroad relevant to those voters. North Carolina's
General Assembly enacted a voter ID law in twenty eighteen,
but we didn't get to do it because, yeah, we
were getting sued all over the place, right, So took
years of litigation and the law finally took effect in
twenty twenty three, but the law has never been applied
to overseas military and civilian voters who vote absentee. The
North Carolina Board of Elections, on a bipartisan and unanimous basis,
exempted those voters from the voter ID law. And this
is because when you are overseas and you're a and
you're voting, you're voting in local, state, and national races,
and there is a national guideline for overseas voters that
does not include a photo ID. And so the state
harmonized its law for or absentee ballots cast from overseas
with the federal law. The North Carolina Board of Elections said,
we're going to have this same exemption. On April first,
twenty twenty four, the State Board, pursuant to its rulemaking authority,
promulgated a final rule which provided that overseas military and
civilian voters were not required to submit a copy of
their photo ID with their absentee ballot. An identical temporary
administrative rule had already been in effect for eight months
before promulgation of the final rule, so the final rule
was on the books for over seven months prior to
the election, and it went unchallenged. In the months leading
up to the election, the State Board also publicized guidance
to overseas voters which told them that they were exempt
from the voter ID law. Thousands of overseas voters then
on election day relied on that rule and the State
Board's guidance, and in fact they had no choice. Overseas
voters submit their ballots through an online portal, and that
portal has no mechanism for a voter to attach a
copy of their photo ID. That's a problem. That's a problem,
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video dot com. So Judge Griffin, the Republican Appeals Court
judge who ran against the sitting State Supreme Court Judge
Allison Riggs, Democrat. He challenged the votes from a separate
group of voters, children of overseas North Carolinians who, according
to the judge, when casting an absentee ballot in twenty
twenty four, checked a box indicating that they have never
lived in the United States. These are called the never residents.
For over a decade prior to the twenty twenty four election,
their state law that granted these never residents the right
to vote, and they had voted under that status in
over forty consecutive elections. But North Carolina's constitution includes a
bonafied residency requirement for voters. The North Carolina Court of
Appeals and the North Carolina Supreme Court both determined that
the law granting never residents the right to vote conflicted
with the bonafied residency provision in the state constitution.
Speaker 1: And so it was void.
Speaker 2: It was voided because the law cannot supplant the constitution.
Everybody who self identified as a never resident in the
November twenty twenty four election, several hundred individuals will have
their votes discarded.
Speaker 1: In this race.
Speaker 2: There was no cure process offered to any individual who
may have inadvertently checked the box indicating that they have
never lived in the US, and who had in fact
previously lived in the US lived in North Carolina, right,
So there, if you made a mistake and checked the box,
there was no way for you to fix that. The
question presented here, the judge ruled, is whether those decisions
from the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court,
which rested on state law grounds, can be implemented in
an election in a manner consistent with federal law. And
that's where he says the answer is no. In his
sixty eight page ruling, the judge named Myers again this
is a Trump appointment, said that Griffin, the Republican and
the North Carolina GOP's unprecedented effort to challenge over sixty
five thousand ballots presented an unconstitutional burden on the right
to vote. Charlotte Observer reports that in April, the state
Supreme Court threw out Griffin's life urgest challenge most amount
of ballots that he was challenging. They threw that went out,
but they ruled that potentially thousands of military and overseas
voters would have to prove their eligibility during a thirty
day ballot review process. This was the cure period. They're
like we're tossing all of these, but there's still this
like pool of anywhere from you know, seventeen hundred to
six thousand votes or so. We'll give them thirty days
to basically show proof of you know, photo ID if
you were absentee or whatever. Several hundred other voters challenged
over the residency status. This was the never residence. But
if this judge's ruling now stands, it means the cure
period will not begin and no votes will be discarded.
Griffin and the North Carolina GOP are likely to appeal
this ruling to the Fourth Circuit US Court of Appeals,
but that court has already ruled against their efforts previously,
so the case could ultimately reach the US Supreme Court.
Griffin had initially challenged over sixty five thousand ballots that
was significantly reduced when the state Supreme Court, Republican controlled,
rejected the largest chunk of those ballots that was they
did not have certain identifying numbers in the state registration database.
I've said this from the beginning, like virtually all of
this is a mess because of the state Board of Elections.
Just you've got tens of thousands of people that are
supposed to have identification numbers, either the Social Security number
or if they don't provide one, they get a voter
ID number basically, and the state board never went through
they and did a list maintenance to make sure everybody
had these numbers. The State Supreme Court ruled that this
omission was not the voter's fault and therefore could not
be used to cancel their ballots. But the State Supreme
Court said that these other group of absentees without photo ID,
that that challenge could proceed, but you have to have
a thirty day remedy period, a cure period. The judge
noted that the state had approved an exemption to the
idea requirement for military and overseas voters that was in
place for months before the election, but was never challenged
until after. So I don't know, man, maybe like maybe
we get some better list maintenance. Now that the Board
of Elections is going to is appointed by the state
Auditor Dave Bollock right, the Republican legislature moved the appointment
power from the governor over to the state auditor. Governor
sued won the first time, lost on an appeals to
appeal again, so who knows? If I have no idea
what's going to happen with that? Also of no Tim
Wiggington Wigginton from the Blue Ridge Times reporting on the
Fair Election Fund report on North Carolina's election system, and
the report relied on criteria laid out in the Baker
Carter Commission from two thousand and five to address americans
failing confidence in the election system, which provided over eighty
recommendations for sound elections. One of them was voter ID
and North Carolina overall got a score of a C
in election administration. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast,
so if you'd like, please support them too and tell
them you heard it here. You can also become a
patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecallanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't take anything
while I'm gone.