OPINION: Analyzing the wild theories of your local politicians

Editor’s Note: Koen Rodabaugh is an intern for state Sen. Bobby Hanig.

The General Assembly has started back up and so too has the controversy. Most of the talk surrounding the 2023 session has been about a select few bills, but there are other proposals circulating among your politicians that should be raising eyebrows.

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

Rep. Kelly Alexander has proposed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The compact requires that North Carolina join a group of states to send all of its electors to vote for the presidential candidate that wins the national popular vote.

While I personally am in favor of presidential victors being decided by a national popular vote, I am not in favor of circumventing the Constitution to do so. 

The Constitution clearly states in the Compact Clause of Article I, section 10 that “no State shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.”

Such an act directly circumvents the role of the federal government in regulating its elections. Only Congress has the power to change the laws surrounding presidential elections across the board, be it through a bill or an amendment.

Wake County Commissioner Redistricting

Democrats, led by Rep. Julie von Haefen, seemed willing to die on a quite undemocratic hill surrounding alterations to the process of electing Wake County Commissioners. They’ve since struck a compromise, but their opposition should nonetheless be noted for its hypocritical nature.

Wake County Commissioners are currently elected in at-large elections. For example, the commissioner of Wake Forest’s district would be decided by every citizen of Wake county, including those from the highly democratic areas of Cary and Raleigh who make up  approximately 55% of the population in the county. 

Under the at-large system, the county was composed entirely of Democrats. The partisan breakdown of the county however would suggest a 4-3 or 5-2 Democratic majority. 

With a party so up in arms about gerrymandering at the state level, it is baffling that these same individuals would be opposed to a system that would more accurately represent the population of the county. The change wouldn’t even shift the power of the parties. Their aggressive opposition represented a hypocritical position on the role of redistricting in power balances.

Convention of the States

Republicans have proposed a convention of the states where every state would send delegates to discuss the passage of a constitutional amendment. It is one of two ways to alter the Constitution under Article V. 

The last time the United States called a constitutional convention was in 1787, which began as a discussion on amendments to the Articles of Confederation. By September, the convention had voted to scrap the Articles entirely and just barely passed the Constitution we live by today. 

There is no doubt in my mind that such a convention today would inevitably reach the same conclusion reached in 1787: we must start over and make a new constitution. The problem is that we no longer have the enlightened scholars we had in the past like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. 

For some, not even these intelligent but flawed men made an adequate system. What makes us think that fringe and polar opposite politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene would work together to make a better system?

Critical race theory in public schools

This last topic needs a little introduction as critical race theory has become a buzzword for the right. Most complaints about the theory are related to its supposed application in K-12 education, purportedly teaching white kids to hate themselves and teaching minority students to hate America. 

Speaking to Fox News, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for governor in 2024, said, “Ending indoctrination in schools is such a passion of mine. We have got to ensure that things like critical race theory are not creeping in and causing our children to hate the nation that they live in.”

Simply put, this theory is not in public schools. As a political science student, I have only heard of the theory twice in my life, and it was never taught as a fact. The theory is reserved for the upper echelons of scholarship. If you go to Harvard, you’ll likely learn about it. You will not find it in kindergarten classrooms; the theory is too complex for basic education.

Civic education has become more race conscious, but this is not the same as critical race theory. Opposition to current history education, guise as a fight against critical race theory, simply reinstates the whitewashed history of the past.

There are many crackpot theories that our legislators hold and many of them are highly publicized, such as the Parent’s Bill of Rights. However, there are many more questionable theories that go largely ignored but should nonetheless be recognized. If we are to hold our politicians accountable on both sides of the aisle, we must know the full extent of their ideas, good and bad.