Reece Gardner: Ballot updates for 2018

I much prefer to write about human interest stories instead of government or political issues, but all things about life have an effect on us and it is important that we try to keep current on happenings around us. These happenings include the race now underway for the N.C. Supreme Court.

It appears the Legislature's Senate Bill 3 will hold, requiring that judicial candidates who switched their party affiliation within 90 days of filing office may not appear on the ballot as members of either their previous party or the party to which they switched their affiliation. 

This means that in the sole race tor N.C. Supreme Court this year, Incumbent Justice Barbara Jackson will be listed as Republican and civil rights attorney Anita Earls will be listed as a Democrat. The third candidate on this ballot, Chris Anglin, who just recently changed his affiliation from Democrat to Republican, will not have any party listing by his name.

Another happening is the effort to place six constitutional amendments on our ballots in November. One of the guests on my television show this week is N.C. Senate Majority Leader John Bell, and we rather thoroughly discussed these amendments. As you probably know, it is uncertain at the moment whether all six, or any, of the amendments will appear on the ballot.

Two of the amendments are to shift control of filling vacant judgeships away from the governor to the legislature, and to give appointment powers over the state elections and ethics board to the legislature. A separate lawsuit has also been filed by the state NAACP and the Clean Air Carolina to block these same two amendments, plus they oppose two others, one that would mandate photo identification to vote and the other that would reduce the maximum allowed income tax rate.

Only two of the six amendments are not under attack - Strengthening Victims' Rights and Protecting the Right to Hunt and Fish. The other four are definitely being challenged, but the dispute must work its way through the courts by Sept. 1 in time to make them available to absentee voters.

Whatever decision the three-judge panel (one Republican, one Democrat and one unaffiliated) makes will almost certainly be appealed to the state Supreme Court. There is so much more detail to these amendments than I have space to deal with today, but we still have ample time between now and Nov. 6 to air them out.  

And now to close on a humorous note: A Sunday school teacher was trying to explain to the 6-year-olds in his class what someone had to do in order to get to heaven. He asked, "If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale, and gave all my money to the church, would that get me to heaven?"

"NO," the children answered.

Then he asked, "If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would THAT get me into heaven?"  Again the answer was, "NO."

Well then, he said, "if I was kind to animals and loved my wife, would that get me into heaven?" Again, they all shouted, 'NO."  "Well then, how CAN I get into heaven>"

A little boy in the back row stood up and shouted, "YOU GOTTA BE DEAD!"

Have a great day!