NC legislators must act during this session to ensure safe, accessible voting in 2020

Protect voters

The N.C. General Assembly needs to act immediately to ensure safe and accessible voting in 2020.

While much attention has been paid to expanding access to absentee mail ballots, which is desperately needed, we must also preserve in-person voting and make it safe. That means recruiting poll workers to move voters in and out of polling places swiftly. We need to pay poll workers more and counties need money to hire more people to process absentee ballots.

The two-witness requirement for absentee-by-mail ballots must be waived for this election. Voters should not be asked to sacrifice their health to find witnesses.

Voter registration is also being threatened by the pandemic. We are already seeing a disheartening downward trend. We need to extend the registration deadline and open up additional ways for people to register.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice strongly urges N.C. legislators to make protecting voters a priority now. We’ve lost so much to this pandemic — we cannot afford to lose our democracy as well.

Allison Riggs, Durham

Chief counsel for voting rights

Nursing facilities

Regarding “Advocates call for widespread coronavirus testing of NC nursing home residents, staff,” (April 28):

Thank you for publishing this article regarding priority testing of residents in facilities with poor quality ratings and low staffing ratios.

Thankfully, the state will report outbreaks and deaths in long term care facilities regularly. Friends of Residents in Long Term Care (FOR) has said for years that a sufficient, qualified and stable workforce is critical to good standards of care for our most vulnerable citizens.

North Carolina lags the nation on standards of care, ranking 46th in average nurse staffing hours and 37th in other direct care staff hours. Our tax dollars pay for 72% of all long term care, yet facilities are allowed to operate with inadequate staffing. When the pandemic arrived, these same facilities were not prioritized to receive PPE, tests or training.

We need to learn from this now and do better in the future.

William Lamb, Raleigh

FOR board president

Misleading numbers

One of the primary criteria towards relaxing of the stay-at-home mandate is the reduction of new COVID-19 cases over a two-week period. Currently, it seems all new cases are counted and measured towards this benchmark irrespective of their source. This includes a disproportionate number of cases coming from institutions such as nursing homes and prisons that are largely isolated from the general public. This skewed measure is misleading. Removing the institutional cases from the overall count would be a more accurate measure of whether the spread of COVID-19 is, or is not, declining statewide over time.

Thomas Randall, Durham

Misplaced blame

The writer of “Republican policies” (April 29 Forum) blames the 2008 financial crises on “Republican-sponsored legislation” even though the House voted 362-57 and the Senate 90-8, both overwhelming bipartisan majorities, to approve the bill he references.

To say that this legislation was “Republican-sponsored” is correct as it was co-sponsored by three Republicans. But it was approved by an overwhelming majority of the Democratic congressmen (155-51) and Democratic senators (38-7), supported by a Democratic administration and signed into law by a Democratic president.

Clearly the Democrats were responsible for this legislation becoming law. And if the financial crises of 2008 was a by-product of the legislation, then surely the Democrats must take full responsibility for enacting this enabling legislation.

Tom Anhut, Cary

Sen. Burr

Regarding “I’m still waiting for a real investigation into Senator Richard Burr’s stock selloff,“ (April 28 Forum):

I’m shocked at the number of people who think Sen. Richard Burr is selling his stock based on information not available to the public. I didn’t have that special information, but I sold all of my stock (about $75,000) at the same time he did based on information available to everyone.

Bob Wright, Raleigh

Lessons learned

This pandemic has clearly shown who keeps this country running — not the CEOs, stockholders, executives, or U.S. military.

It’s the workers in grocery stores, health care, education, day care, food service, sanitation, and other poorly paid people.. They’re the backbone of our country, the ones who keep our lives comfortable.

The post-pandemic economy is going to have minimal impact on the 1% since they hold the levers of power. It’s going to impact the poor and the former middle class.

We need to seriously rethink how our tax dollars are spent and on whom. We need to rethink the essential functions of our military, our economy, and large corporations. We cannot go back to the way things were if we are to survive the 2020 economic catastrophe, as well as the climate catastrophe.

Susan Oehler, Asheville