Bob Orr swan dives into the leftist hysteria over voter ID
When he was on the bench, I thought Bob Orr was one of the smartest, sanest people out there. My how things change.
Here’s Orr, the Democrats’ and driveby media’s faaaaaaaaaavorite Republican in The Charlotte Observer:
The Observer’s editorial board recently opined against a new Republican
proposal for a constitutional amendment requiring photo voter IDs for North Carolina elections. Six months ago, I would have disagreed with the board. Voter IDs to me and probably many North Carolinians seemed a common sense, albeit small, way to combat potential voter fraud – a problem that’s not fictional.
Opponents to voter IDs contend, however, that it’s a voter suppression ploy by Republicans aimed primarily at black voters. While I’m still not convinced of the lurking evil of such a proposal, I’ve changed my mind on the issue. I’ve been wanting to write about Ron Chernow’s extraordinary biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Thanks to the voter ID proposal, I’ve found a way to turn a book review into a pointed opinion piece.[…]
OK. So, the comparison to HB2 didn’t strike enough fear in the low-information voters. So we’re dialing things back to The Civil War?
MORE:
[…] Chernow’s book about Grant is without a doubt one of the most powerful and insightful biographies I’ve ever read. Grant was a fascinating character more renowned in history for his prowess as the Union
commander who used sheer overwhelming troop numbers to overpower Confederate forces and win the Civil War. But he also had a drinking problem, and his two terms as president were best known for a variety of scandals. Despite our historical perception of Grant, Chernow says that many contemporary historians now view Grant as our single most under-appreciated president.[…]
Okay. The Civil War. President Grant and his drinking problem. Still waiting for the tie-in to a voter ID amendment.
MORE:
[…] What does any of this have to do with voter ID? The latter part of Grant’s career as president overlapped with Reconstruction of the South, the new freedom of the slaves and the granting of rights to them,
particularly the right to vote. For those of us who grew up in the South and are of a certain generation, the history books told us that Reconstruction was all about carpetbaggers from the North, traitorous Southerners (or “Scalawags”) and freed blacks all taking advantage of those poor white home folks below the Mason-Dixon line. Nobody told us of the extreme violence and intimidation aimed at those newly freed black slaves.
Chernow points out that while ex-Confederates were resentful over losing the war and their “property” in the form of slaves, the real stick in their craw was that blacks now had the right to vote. That voting power enabled
blacks to hold office and exercise their electoral power. The book traces the horror and violence that descended upon blacks in the South attempting to participate in the most basic of democratic institutions – the right to vote. In 1868, more than 2,000 blacks were killed in Georgia alone in efforts to suppress voting.
Over time, despite federal efforts against the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists, the burning, lynching and terror resulted in a significantly reduced willingness by blacks to try to vote.Fast forward to the beginning of the 20th century, and here in North Carolina and across the South, a new wave of repression took root. Jim Crow laws became the order of the day.
Not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did the fruits of the 15th Amendment begin to seriously be fulfilled for black voters in the South. Is it any wonder then that our fellow citizens of African-American heritage are particularly sensitive when it comes to voting issues? Is it any wonder that they are genuinely concerned that a voter ID requirement is just one more in a long line of measures to limit their right to vote?[…]
Seriously, how does requiring an ID limit the right to vote? Anyone legally driving a car has a photo ID that would be acceptable at the polls.
Driver licenses were not a thing during Reconstruction.
If we were to proceed via Orr’s logic, we’d seek a boycott of The News & Observer (or at least a forced shut-down of the paper) due to its cheerleading for the Klan and incitement of racial violence during Reconstruction.
The current-day N&O had nothing to do with the travesties that occurred during Reconstruction. Neither I nor other voter ID proponents had anything to do with those travesties.
Black-on-black violence is tearing up communities from Wilmington to Greensboro to Durham to Charlotte. It’s arguably worse than what happened during Reconstruction. And we don’t have a voter ID requirement.
Leftists are worried that reasonable requirements like voter ID will shed light on their shenanigans. Here in my county, for instance, we have out-of-state contractors hired by the Democrats to haul loads of people to polling places during early voting and on Election Day. You get van after van-load of people with no IDs being checked. How do you know those vans aren’t popping in at multiple polling places in multiple counties with the same loads of people?
In Democrat-controlled Robeson County, you regularly have Election Night results held in a back room for hours after all other counties have reported in. There have been reports there over the years of polling place observers being locked out of polling places. In 1994, a congressional committee held hearings on site in Lumberton on allegations of voting improprieties. 
Voter ID opponents poo-poo voter fraud claims, saying they rarely happen. Lumberton, my hometown, had three consecutive city council elections over six years in the same district thrown out and re-done (by order of state and federal officials). This was a majority-minority district and the races involved only minority candidates. In those three cases, minority voters had their voting rights defiled by polling-place cheaters. The cheating is color-blind.
Voter ID protects EVERYONE’S rights and ensures our election process has some integrity.
Bob Orr has obviously come down with some mental impairment, undiagnosed but very evident. He has moved beyond the usual RINOism to full-fledged Democrat apologist. It is truly sad to watch such a wretched ending to what once once an admirable legal career.
FWIW… “JudgeBob” is also a very very passionate NeverTrumper… I’m talking Bill Kristol-level of Anti-Trumper.
Bob Orr has gone over to the progressive side of the fence.
His history is skewed. in all his talk about slavery, he never bothers to mention that his hero, Grant, was a slave owner right up to the bitter end in December 1865 when ratification of the 13th amendment finally took away the Grant claves. Orr also dwells on blacks being denied the right to vote in the South around the period of the War Between the States, but conveniently fails to mention that most northern states also failed to allow blacks to vote. The state of New York voted in 1859, for example, to continue to deny blacks the right to vote. Bob Orr is intellectually dishonest in his screed.
It is hard to believe that this guy was ever a judge, when he comes to a conclusion is the absence of any evidence whatsoever. There is no evidence in the United States or abroad that photo voter ID suppresses the vote of any legitimate voter. NONE! Photo Voter ID is used in the majority of US states and in almost every developed country in the world. It is international best practice to stop vote fraud. In fact, in the US, all the false left wing narrative about voter suppression has often led to an increase in minority voting the first election after Photo Voter ID comes into force.
Bob Orr was subsidized for years by Art Pope after he left the bench and his unsuccessful political campaign. One really wonders if he is now being subsidized by George Soros. This article is completely on the Soros wavelength.
I support voter ID for all people Black and White! You need an ID to cash checks and Drive a Car. to Travel by air plane Also.
What it comes down to if the ID laws do not pass is that the GOP needs to hire similar contractors to bus people around to vote. Although it will be hard to get the back room deals like the one where thousands of votes were “found” in Derm to seal the election for Coop.
Then there are those 700 students registered to phony addresses in Durham, hundreds of them to a gravel parking lot at Duke, who voted in 2016 in Durham County. Crooked Cooper is the Vote Fraud Governor.
Part of the problem with ballots in Durham County was the disastrous appointment of an incompetent county Republican elections board chairman. When will Republicans ever learn?