L ast month, Republican state Sens. Jeff Tarte, Warren Daniel and Ronald Rabin introduced a bill that would extend the length of all N.C. legislators’ terms to four years instead of the current two-year terms served in both the state House and Senate.
The stated aim of the senators is to reduce the amount of time legislators must spend fundraising for elections, allowing more time to legislate. Usually, an attempt to reduce the influence money has over politics in the state would be worthy of applause. Unfortunately, the context of the political condition of North Carolina of late makes any extension of term lengths suspect.
It is certainly possible that the senators who introduced the bill are making an effort in good faith to improve the process of lawmaking in Raleigh, but given extensive gerrymandering and laws imposing unnecessary restrictions that limit the voting power of minorities and women , an increase in term lengths mostly serves to make North Carolina less democratic.
Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics at Catawba College, found that changes in 2010 to district maps gave Republicans a significant advantage in elections for the N.C. General Assembly.
It is suspicious that Republican legislators claim they are attempting to limit time spent fundraising when they would actually be extending their time in office while they hold systemic advantages over Democratic legislators. This proposal is especially questionable at a time when approval ratings for the Republican-led state General Assembly are low.
Gerrymandering and restrictive voting laws are shielding legislators from accountability to the entire state. Now is not the time to start delaying what measures of accountability still exist.
