COMMENTARY
From The Publisher’s Desk...
DID VOTER-ID LAWS SUPPRESS THE VOTE?
We know already that in the North Carolina Senate race, State House Speaker Thom Tillis beat Senator
Kay Hagan by a margin of 1.7 percent, or about 48,000 votes.
More than two weeks later, we’re still trying to figure this one out: How much of an impact did voting
restrictions have on the 2014 midterm elections?
And remember, voting restrictions don’t just mean the infamous voter-ID laws that we all know and
Republicans love. Altogether, 21 states kept an array of voting restrictions in place for 2014, from
making it tougher and more costly to meet strict identification requirements to eliminating same-day
registration and early voting.
North Carolina’s voters were, for the first time, voting under one of the
harshest new election laws in the country -- a law that Tillis helped to
craft. Among other changes, the law slashed seven early voting days,
eliminated same-day registration, and prohibited voting outside a
voter’s home precinct -- all forms of voting especially popular among
African Americans.
While it may be too early to assess the impact of the law this year,
the Election Protection hotline and other voter protection volunteers
reported what appeared to be widespread problems both with voter
registration and with voters being told they were in the wrong precinct
yesterday.
Some numbers from recent elections suggest that the magnitude of
the problem may not be far from the margin of victory: In the last
midterms in 2010, 200,000 voters cast ballots during the early voting
days that have now been cut, according to a recent court decision.
In 2012, 700,000 North Carolinians
voted during those days, including
more than a quarter of all African
Americans who voted that year. In 2012, 100,000 voters,
almost a one-third of which were African-American, voted using
same-day registration, which was not available this year. And 7,500
voters cast their ballots outside of their home precincts that year.
Voting, of course, should be easy. Yet when you make it hard it’s
bound to get ugly. What may seem to be victories now may turn
into real losses in 2016 and beyond.
Sincerely,
Phyllis Coley
Phyllis Coley
(CEO/Publisher:
[email protected])
www.spectacularmag.com | November 2014 | SPECTACULAR MAGAZINE
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