NC Legislature’s Partisan Infighting Emblematic of Larger Problems in US Politics
Research shows that individual Americans are, on average, more politically polarized than ever. Additionally, partisan identification has gained a personal identity-like prominence in American life. The consequences here in North Carolina show the same patterns as those at the national level. Source.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections recently made new regulations to make it easier for voters to fix mail-in-ballots. The new regulations would allow voters who are missing witness signatures or addresses on their ballot envelope to correct mistakes by filling out an affidavit as opposed to having to complete a new ballot. Additionally, the agreement would allow election boards to accept absentee ballots up to nine days after the election as long as their postmark date is no later than November 3rd. North Carolina Republicans appealed the new regulations and joined the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee in filing lawsuits to block the changes. Following these lawsuits, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order banning the changes from being enacted.
These contentious developments followed recent fighting in the state legislature in which Republicans accused Democrats of signing a pledge to defund the police. These accusations were rebuked but still managed to cause major strife within the legislature. On one side of the aisle, Republicans said Democrats had betrayed basic public trust whereas, Democratic representative, Robert Reives said that the accusations were a blatant lie and an attempt to charge Democrats with radical policies.
North Carolina has a long history of highly charged politics and is one of the United States’ most coveted battlegrounds. RealClearPolitics has Trump up by a mere 0.8 points and the state faces many other contentious elections. North Carolina has also faced controversy following the condemnation of new Voter ID laws as racially motivated by a federal judge.
Conflicts within the North Carolina legislature are a mere microcosm of the large scale polarization that is consuming American politics and society. Partisan identification affects one’s views not only on policy issues but is increasingly connected with one’s personal identity. The Pew Research Center recently reported that “the level of division and animosity —including negative sentiments among partisans toward the members of the opposing party — has only deepened.”Journalist Thomas Edsall discusses how political polarization has taken on an increasingly negative tone: “hostility to the opposition party and its candidates has now reached a level where loathing motivates voters more than loyalty.”
In political science, Duverger’s law holds that winner-take-all election systems marginalize smaller political parties and result in a two-party system. These two parties then become increasingly polarized as candidates attempt to appeal to the median voter within their party as opposed to the median voter within the general electorate. Two-party systems, like we have in the United States tend to be extremely polarizing. The contentious nature of American politics is a quintessential example of this law taking course in the real world.
This polarization can have harmful effects and lead to inaction as rigid mentalities make compromise unlikely. Additionally, people on both sides of the aisle have begun to see institutions in the US as tools wielded by the opposite party in efforts by to gain advantage and assert power. Republicans and Democrats today have increasingly less trust in governmental institutions. This distrust leads to infighting as opposed to constructive efforts to fix real problems.
As Democrats and Republicans become more starkly divided, political preferences are increasingly less motivated by fact and instead determined by individual party allegiances. Information that is contrary to an individual’s belief is written off as fake news and no longer given any reasonable merit. The recent contentious developments in the North Carolina legislature are examples of a much larger problem of intense polarization that grows in the United States every year.