A proposal to ask state lawmakers to return the Winston-Salem City Council election back to odd years was met with an interesting response from the council lone Republican, Robert Clark:
Clark, the lone Republican on the eight-member council, accused Democrats of doing what Democrats statewide have accused the GOP of trying to do: trying to suppress voter turnout.
At issue was a proposal to ask state lawmakers to return the city to holding city council elections every four years in an odd-year cycle that Clark said would result in a dramatically lower turnout for council races.
“This proves that voter suppression is alive and well in the Democratic Party,” Clark said.
Council Member Derwin Montgomery was the first to object to Clark’s remark, calling it an “atrocious statement” to compare moving the timing of city elections to literacy tests and other methods used historically to keep blacks from voting.
Lot of issues going on here—for obvious reasons, more people cast voted City Council in the 2016 election than in the most recent odd-year elections. On the flip side, however, most council seats were unopposed and–if the object of moving the council elections to even was to “flip” the council to a Republican majority–then it didn’t work.
As the Winston-Salem Journal put it, “after some more back-and-forth, the council eventually decided to push the issue back to committee.”
