Salisbury Post: Proposed amendments are a blank check for pols and bad deal for voters
These amendments give state legislative leaders a blank check to rewrite our system of checks and balances and permanently entrench their brand of partisan politics in our state constitution. Anyone who believes in our democratic system of checks and balances should vote no on all six amendments.
Like so many people living in North Carolina, Tom Wood answered our nation’s call. At 20 he volunteered for the draft and shipped out as an Army medic in Vietnam.
Tom’s easy laugh masks the emotional pain he still feels 48 years later — and fails him entirely when he thinks about the proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot this November.
“We had incoming casualties every day, young men often with limbs blown off, blinded by shrapnel and burned beyond recognition all for with the hopes that democracy would prevail in their homeland, and I carry those emotional wounds today,” he says.
“The notion that legislators are playing fast and loose with our democracy, like it’s some toy to benefit a political agenda, enrages me. We were trying to bring democracy to Vietnam, and now I live in a state where legislators are trying to do everything to subvert our democracy.
“Good men and women fought and died for our rights as American citizens. These amendments make a mockery of their sacrifice.”
On Monday, we are launching the By the People Campaign, a coalition effort of nonprofits, grassroots groups, and community leaders, to educate voters about the harms of all six proposed constitutional amendments on the 2018 ballot and to help communities statewide fight back.
