In her regular appearance on North Carolina Public Radio WUNC with host Jeff Tiberii, JLF’s Becki Gray and fellow guest Rob Schofield from the N.C. Justice Center discussed several bills going through the General Assembly as well as the possibility of the Republican National Convention (RNC) relocating out of North Carolina.
Tiberii kicked off the conversation with a discussion of a bipartisan bill that recently made it out of the N.C. House. The bill provides additional funding for elections and makes it easier to vote by mail. Rob Schofield commented:
It is great that we are making it easier to vote by mail. We have made it easier to just have one witness who then provides their address and identifying information… That’s a great idea as opposed to having two who don’t.
Gray said:
I thought it was so refreshing to see the house members working in tandem… with as much transparency as we can get under the circumstances…
It looks like we are on track to get this done and get this done early on in the legislative short session.
President Trump recently threatened to move the RNC from Charlotte if Gov. Cooper could not guarantee “full attendance” for the conventioneers. On the matter of the RNC, Gray commented:
One thing with these conventions and these big events that occur is that these contracts are signed and worked out several years ahead of time. There are several investments that have already been made and a lot of this is put in place. To pull off an event like this takes a lot of planning that just can’t be done overnight.
One of the questions that I have is: In less than three months before the occurrence of the convention, would another site be able to get everything in place in order to hold the convention?
From a practical standpoint, it seems like it would be awfully difficult to move an event of this size to another venue in this amount of time.
Listen to the full episode of WUNC’s Politics podcast here. Follow Becki Gray on Twitter: @beckigray.
