Tag: Tom McInnis

Voters’ IQ welcomes voter ID

North Carolina’s General Assembly did its job this week. It passed legislation that is needed and overdue. This November, ballots will contain a proposal to amend the state constitution so that every citizen is required to present a valid photo ID in order to cast votes at a polling place.

Voter ID requirements were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court a decade ago. If voters approve of the measure, first passed by the House and immediately thereafter by the Senate, North Carolina will become the 34th state requiring voter ID at polls.

Moore County Representative Jamie Boles (NC-52) led the charge to advance the bill to the full House, where it gained momentum.

Next, expect Democrats to dust off their tired arguments that voter ID is a concoction to deter minorities and the elderly from voting. Former Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder considered voter ID a vile, racist step solely taken to “disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious rights.”

This heated rhetoric might have had teeth a century ago when a drivers’ license was some flimsy paper product, easily distorted, in an age when few held IDs or ever imagined driving a car. But this is 2018. Digital technology can produce slick, fraud-proof ID cards efficiently and cheaply. In fact, Republican state legislators say they will see to it that anyone who needs an ID card will receive one at no cost. Someone willing to make the effort to vote should be inclined to make a similar effort to secure an ID. It has many practical uses beyond the voting booth.

Boles’ challenger to his House seat, Democrat Lowell Simon, wasted no time raising red flags about voter ID. You would think Democrat voters would be offended by the inclination of their candidates to assume they are too lazy, stupid or elderly to figure out how to acquire an ID. But that’s their fallback position every time this issue comes up.

“I would be looking for ways to make it easier for people to vote,” Simon told The Pilot.

This follows the warped logic on the Left that we should be looking for ways to make it easier for families flooding our southern U.S. border to enter the country without documentation. It’s about compassion, don’t you know. Law and order is such a callous pursuit, after all.

Democrat Helen Probst Mills, who is running against Republican incumbent Tom McInnis for the District 25 NC Senate seat, also seems to doubt the intelligence of her supporters. She complained to The Pilot: “We are asking voters to approve a substantial change without providing them with enough information to make an informed decision.”

What additional information shall we provide? It’s strikingly obvious. If you want to exercise the privilege of voting, present an ID and confirm that you are eligible.

Unlike Democrats, Republican leaders are confident that their voters are smart, savvy and pragmatic.

 

 

 

 

Backing McInnis

At last, we move on down the path to the Fall mid-term elections. More than a few Moore County Republicans surely harbor lingering resentment about the lengths to which the state GOP establishment sunk to sink a primary challenge by Whispering Pines Mayor Michelle Lexo against incumbent Tom McInnis in NC-25 (although McInnis was no incumbent in Moore due to haphazard redistricting).

But in conceding defeat last week, Lexo took the high ground and graciously thanked her supporters. Republicans must now rally, reunite and take the high ground in embracing McInnis. Maintaining a GOP supermajority in Raleigh is priority one.

Although McInnis is facing a first-time candidate in Helen Probst-Mills, she is widely known in the community and not long ago hosted a fundraiser attended by Gov. Roy Cooper in her Pinehurst home. And that’s not all.

In its analysis of “races to watch” in 2018, the non-profit public policy web site RealFactsNC.com, makes the chilling observation that “the voters who sent (McInnis) to the General Assembly are gone (our emphasis) from his redrawn district.” Furthermore, fewer than half of NC-25 voters “have seen McInnis on their ballot before.”

Given that Moore County accounts for just under half of all voters in the district, this ostensibly means that Probst-Mills can legitimately make the same argument voiced by Lexo: I live in Moore; McInnis does not. (He counters by saying, legitimately, that he has owned property and paid taxes in Moore for 40+ years, and does, in fact, own a Pinehurst home).

The bottom line is that getting out the vote for McInnis is absolutely vital, and we must now leverage his backing from NC GOP heavyweights. Probst-Mills has fundraising chops, too, due to her status as a member of the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees (and her alliance with far-left SCC President John Dempsey), and ties to Cooper’s inner circle.

But she embraces several positions that will encounter fervent resistance in Moore County. Probst-Mills echoes the baloney from the left that North Carolina teachers are underpaid and that our schools are neglected. (Some are and yet school boards are not held to account). She favors further expansion of Medicaid, fueling the entitlement engine Democrats always seek to expand. And her campaign web site makes the unsubstantiated — if not false — claim that “people’s ability to vote is being curtailed” in our state. What a whopper!

Sen. McInnis holds a significant advantage that can be a double-edged sword for politicians. He has a voting record in the NC General Assembly. Opponents can use this as fodder. Unless, of course, a majority of Moore Republicans support McInnis’s positions on jobs and the economy, education and vocational options, and Second Amendment preservation.

These issues, if communicated effectively, will re-elect our Republican Senator. Get to know the issues and get to work!