House Speaker Explains Special Session

RALEIGH – So the General Assembly will be back in session come tomorrow and the Left is in full spin mode, which, interestingly, is exactly why lawmakers found it necessary to come back. Gov. Roy Cooper is accusing Republicans of coming back to ‘rig’ the amendments language on the ballot, when the ballot language was in the lawmakers’ domain the entire time.

Instead of taking the Left’s word for it, here is the reasoning straight from the Speaker of the House Tim Moore as released in a statement Monday, for what it’s worth:

“The state General Assembly will convene this week to adopt a fair and nonpartisan approach to captioning the six proposed constitutional amendments for North Carolina voters this November, after state House and Senate leaders obtained signatures from the necessary three-fifths majority of each chamber to convene a special session.

State lawmakers already provided short titles and ballot questions for the six constitutional amendments that clearly and concisely describe the proposals.

Opposition to the proposals, however, is fueling political influence on the Constitutional Amendments Publication Commission charged with accurately describing the questions with apolitical captions for voters.

[…]

“The General Assembly already approved short titles of the constitutional amendments that accurately describe their impact,” [Speaker Tim] Moore said, “and must prevent outside attempts to politicize what should be a quick and straightforward administrative process by the commission.”

The commission has never written a ballot caption before yet planned to meet until the last possible days to act during the week of August 6, 2018.

A recent survey of likely North Carolina voters found broad majority support for several of the proposed constitutional amendments.”

What the Left is holding out as an example of the commission’s transparency when it comes to the public meetings, is actually an attempt to way until the last minute to approve language. That way Republican lawmakers would have no time to object to what was sure to be a hostile take on at least a few of the amendments, however subtle Stein and Marshall and their backroom coaches on the Left tried to make it.

Those surveys referenced in Moore’s statement allude to flash polls conducted by the Civitas Institute that showed majority support for nearly all of the amendments, and a surprising amount of support from Democrats for items like voter ID (nearly half of D’s supported the idea).

Word from leadership is that the session will only last a day, so all the hysteria will likely be forced to dissipate before the end of the week.