All of these efforts are likely to hurt Democrats more than Republicans, said MikeMunger, a political science professor at Duke University, who was also the Libertarian Party’s candidate for governor in 2008.
“It’s safe to say that if anybody benefited, it was the Democrats,” Munger said of early voting. “I did a fair amount of campaigning at early-voting stations, and I watched the buses pull up, and I watched people hand out pieces of paper explaining how to vote Democrat. I didn’t see any Republicans doing that. That is what politics is about. Politics is about mobilizing your people. The Obama campaign was brilliant at that.
“This is something Democrats did very well,” Munger added. “This is the Republicans responding to make it a little bit harder to do that.”
Is it ethical for elected officials to legislate a bill giving them an advantage in future electoral campaigns? No-- it is a conflict-of-interest. Yet, this is exactly what a political party's member legislators did in the State of North Carolina.
ALSO, it is regressive democracy for elected officials to pass laws that degrade candidates' freedoms to productively conduct election campaigns. This is one more systematic roadblock for candidates for office, especially the third/ minor party and Independent candidates.
