Why doesn't the legislature just make it illegal to be a Democrat?
Published June 30, 2017
Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, June 30, 2017.
Why doesn’t the N.C. General Assembly just go ahead and make it illegal to be a Democrat?
Republican leaders mercilessly hacked the budgets of Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, both confessed D’s.
Now, it looks as if they want to impeach Secretary of State Elaine Marshall. The House Rules Committee, on a party-line vote, ordered an investigation as the first step.
For those who came in late, North Carolina’s secretary of state is not in charge of Tar Heel foreign affairs. Instead, the secretary is the state’s official record keeper, overseeing a number of important housekeeping functions, such as incorporating businesses.
Among these functions is licensing notaries public. A notary public stamps seals on deeds and other important legal documents to make them official.
Herein lies the rub. Rep. Chris Millis of Hampstead, a devout Republican, says Marshall has named hundreds of non-U.S. citizens -- possibly even illegal aliens -- as notaries over the past decade.
Marshall says he’s full of beans. She’s a lawyer, and he isn’t, so she might know the law better.
In fact, the law seems rather unclear. North Carolina statutes only require that a notary “reside legally in the United States.” A 1984 Supreme Court ruling actually made it illegal to require notaries to be citizens.
Marshall says she hasn’t accepted DACA papers -- deferments for non-citizens who were brought here as children -- as an ID for notary applicants, only permanent residency papers.
In other words, whatever Marshall did, possibly, is not a crime. It is a dispute over the reading of a statute.
For example, the Supreme Court, in overturning some of North Carolina’s partisan redistricting, did not line up the legislators in orange jump suits and chains and march them off to the hoosegow. It told them to go, sin no more and correct their bills.
If Rep. Millis thinks he has evidence of wrongdoing, he should turn it over to a state prosecutor.
Dragging Marshall to an impeachment stinks of arrogance on the part of a majority faction.
Republicans have been running against Marshall for years, but she was first elected in 1996 and has been elected every four years since. It looks as if some in the GOP are trying to correct the voters’ mistake.
North Carolina hasn’t impeached anyone since 1871. It’s a big step that ought not be taken over technical legal quibbles.
