Some Democrats in Chapel Hill and some in the media are outraged at something they say has been going on at early-voting polling places. A young woman has been distributing a list of Republican candidates and, in doing so, they say, is misrepresenting herself. A column in The N&O today carries an account of one Democratic lawyer who was accosted by this woman:
He walked to the side entrance and was approached by a female college student who asked whether he was a registered Democrat.
“Yes I am,” he said.
She replied, “Good, here’s a list of our judicial candidates.”
The news director of radio station WCHL, alerted by either miffed Democrats or other media, went to see for himself. He said, “At that point, she was still misrepresenting herself.” He told The N&O that the woman never asked his party affiliation but offered him a “list of good candidates.”
Now, I’m no lawyer, but I’m having trouble finding the crime here. The first Democrat quoted the woman as saying, “Good, here’s a list of our judicial candidates.” She did not say, “Here’s a list of Democratic judicial candidates.” Lawyers are supposed to be attuned to such nuances and fine print, I thought. The news director also claimed the woman was “misrepresenting herself,” but all that is said in the column is that she never asked his party identification and offered him a “list of good candidates.”
I don’t recall any media or Democratic lawyers showing similar outrage over misrepresentation when the Democratic-dominated General Assembly converted the judicial ballots to nonpartisan during the 2002 session after a string of Republican successes in Supreme Court and Appeals Court races.
