By Martin Dyckman • Guest Columnist

Even authoritarian regimes like Russia’s pretend to respect the right to vote. The contrast with authentic democracies is defined by these factors: the ease or difficulty of actually casting a vote, how honestly it is counted, and whether it even matters.

Democracy in North Carolina is failing miserably on two of them.

First, the Republican majority in Raleigh rigged the voting districts to guarantee their control of the General Assembly even before the people’s votes are cast and counted. The parties are contesting barely half the seats this year. Nearly a third are entirely unopposed.

Come next June, the number of visitors to Western North Carolina will jump by at least 1,500 Republicans.

When N.C. GOP Director Todd Poole emailed a list of state job openings — some 300 vacant positions in all — to dozens of Republican operatives asking them to spread the word to party friendlies, some political fallout was to be expected.

Some mainstream Republicans in Haywood County fear their local party is being hijacked by a far-right faction with extreme views on what limited government should look like. 

The ascension of what some deem the radical right into leadership positions on the party’s executive committee is steering the party into uncharted activist territory, threatening to veer the party off course, they say.

The Haywood County Republican Party, siding with a two-time county commission candidate, has submitted a resolution to the county saying it should hire a professional appraisal firm to review all home values.

U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, sporting an Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians button, hosted a town hall meeting last Thursday in Cherokee that he said was the “most vocal” he has held in the district.

The North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching in Jackson County had its funding slashed in half in 2011, and this year, Raleigh may finish the job.

Give a U.S. congressman a cookie, and he can eat it. But offer him some free pancakes, and he’ll have to pass.

“I can eat a pig in a blanket, but God forbid if it’s a hot dog. If it’s a hot dog, I can’t take it,” said newly elected Congressman Mark Meadows about being able to accept an hors d’oeuvre but not a meal according to a set of ethical rules that all members of Congress must follow.

North Carolina’s General Assembly — under the leadership of Republicans for the first time in more than a century— will hopefully refrain in the future from pushing unfunded mandates onto the backs of counties and their taxpayers.

The U.S. Congress approved the Help America Vote Act so that counties could keep electronic voting machines updated and election workers properly trained. After the Bush-Gore debacle in 2000 that ended up in the Supreme Court, that seemed a wise decision. Electronic machines could have prevented the problems that occurred in Florida, problems that left Americans in limbo as to who won the presidential election.

Elections are upon us again.

Although the primary has come and gone and the general election is still months away, voters are being asked to head to the polls July 17 to weigh in once more on some of May’s tighter races. Run-off elections typically post dismally low turnout among voters.