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Even Counting Votes too Scientific for North Carolina

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


I don't have time for this. I am busy. I am on deadline for a project that actually pays the money that puts the macaroni and cheese in my children's mouths. So as much as I love this blog I don't have time to update right now.

Except here goes.

North Carolina? You remember: the state against science regarding sea level rise? The state with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources head who doubts climate change science and believes oil is a renewable resource? The state that tried to appoint a head of early childhood education who believed the Fukushima earthquake might have been caused by ultrasonic waves from North Korea? That North Carolina?


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Folks, that's nothing. We have a new record.

The scientific method the Republican-run legislature is against now is ... counting. Yep -- in its desperate attempts to get rid of North Carolina's renewable energy program, the legislature has given up the radical, liberal, lamestream, obviously subjective "science" of, um, actually counting votes. You see, when the votes were actually counted, the bill that would have removed the renewables program (and said that wind, among other things, was not renewable) died in the state house, failing to emerge from committee by an 18-13 vote.

Okay, hmm ... you're Republican legislator Mike Hager, you hate the renewables program, and your bill has just been defeated by an indisputable margin of five votes. What to do ... what to do? Easy. You reintroduce the bill. And when it next comes up in committee, this time in the state senate? You have a voice vote -- and have your finance committee chair, Republican Bill Rabon,refuse to count the actual votes. In a voice vote so close that both sides claim they would have won if the votes had been counted, Rabon declares that the bill has passed and runs off.

No, I wish I were, but I am not making this up. We have given up counting votes in North Carolina. The Reign of Error rules supreme here.

There's still more committee blah blah to go through, and the whole senate, and all that kind of "I'm Just a Bill" stuff. But the facts are hideously simple. Despite the cries of Democratic state Sen. Josh Stein ("North Carolina is not a banana republic"), um ... Josh? Yes it is. You can tell when a polity has become a banana republic: once it ignores the voices of the people and their representatives, it's made the switch. And let me tell you. I'm one of the people of North Carolina, and if there's one thing I know about the people of North Carolina it's what our state senate just proved, scientifically or otherwise:

We. Don't. Count.

 

 

Scott Huler was born in 1959 in Cleveland and raised in that city's eastern suburbs. He graduated from Washington University in 1981; he was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa because of the breadth of his studies, and that breadth has been a signature of his writing work. He has written on everything from the death penalty to bikini waxing, from NASCAR racing to the stealth bomber, for such newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times and such magazines as ESPN, Backpacker, and Fortune. His award-winning radio work has been heard on "All Things Considered" and "Day to Day" on National Public Radio and on "Marketplace" and "Splendid Table" on American Public Media. He has been a staff writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Raleigh News & Observer and a staff reporter and producer for Nashville Public Radio. He was the founding and managing editor of the Nashville City Paper. He has taught at such colleges as Berry College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His books include Defining the Wind, about the Beaufort Scale of wind force, and No-Man's Lands, about retracing the journey of Odysseus. His most recent book, On the Grid, was his sixth. His work has been included in such compilations as Appalachian Adventure and in such anthologies as Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont, The Appalachian Trail Reader and Speed: Stories of Survival from Behind the Wheel. For 2014-2015 Scott is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, which is funding his work on the Lawson Trek, an effort to retrace the journey of explorer John Lawson through the Carolinas in 1700-1701. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, the writer June Spence, and their two sons.

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