Auditor Les Merritt's spokesman played a key role in briefly halting a voting bill, according to e-mails received under a public records request.
At 10:12 a.m. on June 5, Chris Mears forwarded a Dome item on a bill to allow North Carolinians to register to vote the weekend before an election to Merritt, Chief Deputy Kris Bailey, Executive Assistant James Forte and legal counsel Tim Hoegemeyer.
"If we want to have an impact on voter registration legislation, we should get Sen. Berger information sooner rather than later," he wrote. "This is a significant opportunity to safeguard our democracy that I don't think we should pass-up."
Merritt agreed, saying that "time will pass us by." In a reply sent at 10:17, he wrote, "We may need to speak even if our audit is not complete."
At 2:34 p.m., Merritt e-mailed Sen. Dan Clodfelter to ask him to pull the bill. Senate leaders agreed, but they put the bill back up for a vote after a hearing with Merritt. It passed and is now back in the House.
Comments
Re: Spokesman's role
June 25, 2007 - 11:25am — jerimeeTo top it off, on June 19th, the same day that Les Merritt failed to justify even the smallest of his supposed concerns, he also incorrectly filed his own Statement of Organization for reelection with the Board of Elections.
Gary Bartlett's office had to contact him to ask him if he needed help filling out a one page form.
You can view the unsigned and incomplete form Merritt submitted here:
http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/cf_pdf/2007/20070619_54561.pdf
You can read more here:
http://ncdp.org/Les_Merritt_Incompetence
A distinction without a difference
June 23, 2007 - 9:29am — AnglicoIt's mind-boggling. Only in the black-is-white world created by George Bush could this distinction between intervene and influence be taken seriously.
Let's see.
You launch a full-frontal assault in the General Assembly to derail the consideration of a bill . . . but you don't intend to "influence" the vote on the bill?
I say again, Mr. Mears and Mr. Merritt should resign.
Re: Spokesman's role
June 22, 2007 - 8:57pm — dbasemanIt is important to note that Chris Mears, the spokesman who prompted the Auditor's actions to "impact" the Same Day Registration bill (H-91), was political director of the NC Republican Party as recently as 2006 and was involved there in his own scandal for telling GOP leaders across the state to send him directories of church members for use for GOP voter registration and GOTV work. (Google: Mears Republican Church Vote)
There's more on Mears, Auditor's actions, and other emails at:
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/06/full-nc-voter-fraud-scandal-coverage.asp
One correction to this cited blog: Auditor Merritt does NOT deny he wanted to intervene in the Same Day Registration legislation, but he and Mears have repeatedly said they didn't intend to "influence" the vote on the SDR bill, a distinction that may be lost as more details come to light.
I appreciate the invitation, Greenlamp
June 22, 2007 - 8:16pm — Anglicobut no thanks. I'll write what I think needs writing wherever I think it might be useful.
More to the point, I'm not the one who is "making every thing a darned political statement." Mr. Merritt's blatant intrusion into electoral politics is reminiscent of too many other examples of attempts by Republicans to engage in voter suppression in other states. It's a familiar pattern and it deserves zero tolerance. Republicans know everything is on the line in 2008 and I believe they will stop at nothing to keep Democrats from getting veto-proof majorities.
And I daresay, Congress's approval rating is in the toilet for one reason and one reason only. Democrats don't have wide enough margins to get the job done. Republicans have obstructed every Democratic effort to bring accountability to government and they have circled the wagons around the corrupt and arrogant Bush White House.
I'm sure you don't think these issues are "political," and that's your prerogative, but I do think they are . . . and that's mine.
Re: Spokesman's role
June 22, 2007 - 6:43pm — greenlampI should be used to Anglico's blatant partisan hacking, but I'm getting kind of sick. Can you keep your comments on your blog blueNC and stop tainting Dome? If you wonder why congress' approval rating is 14% its because people are tired of both the "right-wing noise machine" and the "left-wing noise machine" making every thing a darned political statement.
Re: Spokesman's role
June 22, 2007 - 6:26pm — bskeelsGood work, please continue following up on the story.
We still do not have any sense of the genesis of the audit; whose idea was it, was it suggested by an outside party, did the Auditor's Office have any communication with an outside party (DoJ? National GOP?), and are there any records of any such communication (especially email)?
It has never made much sense that they would have come up with the notion of an audit of such an unprecedented nature on their own.
Good work, N&O
June 22, 2007 - 5:58pm — AnglicoThanks for digging to the bottom of this bizarre story.
Some of us bloggers at BlueNC are looking into the appropriateness of filing complaints to the NC Ethics Commission regarding Merritt's improper and possibly illegal behavior. I would hope that leaders in the House and Senate are doing the same.
Had Merritt been a Democrat, the right-wing noise machine would be in over-drive demanding his resignation. Which just goes to show that for all their talk about ethics and good governance, the NCGOP is just like its big brother in Washington . . . full of hypocrisy and corruption.
Mears and Merritt should resign.