President Donald Trump won North Carolina three times, yet as Democrats seem poised to take the state’s Senate seat in the upcoming midterm election, Republicans are going to great lengths to cling to power — including by limiting voting opportunity for North Carolina’s African American community.
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“North Carolina’s state board of elections once again refused to provide an accessible early voting location at North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest historically Black college or university,” reported Democracy Docket’s Natalie Hausmann on Thursday. “With student activists in the front row, the GOP-controlled board rejected student pleas for an on-campus polling place in November’s general election during a Thursday vote.”
Hausmann added, “Earlier this year, the board voted along party lines to deny students a voting site on their campus. Brian Kennedy of Democracy North Carolina told Democracy Docket at the time that the vote served as a ‘blueprint for what voter suppression across the nation can look like.’ Now, it’s happened all over again.”
The students were allowed to attend the meeting in which the decision was announced, even though that choice was ultimately made against them. In addition to making it more difficult for African Americans to vote in a state with a long history of segregation and other forms of racial discrimination, the decision is controversial because it specifically targets a voting practice that is disproportionately popular among African American communities.
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“The denial followed a series of election board votes to curtail Sunday voting – popular among black voters – across several counties,” Hausmann wrote. She went on to quote one of the Democrats on the state board who outright claimed the decision could have been racially motivated.
“Jeff Carmon, one of two Democrats on the state board, said some GOP county plans had ‘racial undertones,'” Hausmann reported. “‘Can we identify a single voter who is better served by having fewer opportunities to cast a ballot?’ Carmon asked at the start of the meeting.”
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