North Carolina NAACP Blasts Local Election Boards’ Continued Attempt to Suppress the Vote

The North Carolina NAACP released a statement Sept. 8 deploring “the sad and tragic reality … that the extremists in the Republican party” have continued to try to suppress voters’ rights, most recently by local boards of elections proposing early voting plans that are contrary to the spirit, as well as the letter, of the Aug. 11 decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning the state’s 2013 Voter ID law.

In advance of a Sept. 8 meeting of the state Board of Elections, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, Jr., President of the NC NAACP, wrote that, “incited by Governor McCrory’s resistance to accept the 4th Circuit Court’s ruling,” many of the plans submitted to the state Board of Elections would “implement the spirit of Republican values, not the spirit of the law and the constitutional requirements.”

Barber noted, “They are reducing Saturday voting hours which allow working people to more easily exercise their right to vote. They are excluding Sunday voting because they know Sunday voting is disproportionately used by African Americans. This was at the heart of the 4th Circuit’s decision when they ruled that North Carolina will once again have 17 days of Early Voting. They ruled that Governor McCrory and the State Board of Elections was intentionally suppressing the African American and Latino vote by denying these voting opportunities. We should not have to fight this hard to protect the vote in a Democracy. It’s immoral and un-American.”

In its 11-hour meeting that day, the state board rejected many of the local boards’ plans as well as alternates presented by the lone Democrat on each county’s board. Fortunately for NC voters, the state board in many cases reinstated Sunday voting (“Souls to the Polls”) in counties that had previously had it, and in several cases added extended hours or more polling places during the additional seven days of early voting mandated by the Appeals Court.

For more information, contact Tyler Swanson, NC NAACP Communication Coordinator, at [email protected]; (336) 317-3586, or PO Box 335, Durham, NC 27702.