Not crumbs. But not quite half a loaf either. The State Board of Elections of North Carolina made some improvements in several counties’ heavily reduced November voting schedules Thursday. These were, as reported here yesterday, a reeking bag of partisanship with racist impact.
Even though nobody spoke openly about implementing the reduced schedules to benefit a 21st Century version of Jim Crow, that’s precisely what North Carolina has been doing even after being smacked aside the head by the federal courts for its voter ID law and other rules that make casting a ballot difficult for Democrats, particularly the poor and African Americans.
Colin Campbell reports that the state board:
...voted to restore Sunday early voting hours in several counties that had offered the option—popular among African-American voters—in 2012.
The board also voted to add early voting hours in counties where schedules had been cut. And the board added four sites for the first week of early voting in Mecklenburg County. But in party line votes, the board’s Republican majority rejected efforts to add Sunday voting in counties that hadn’t previously offered it.
Some of the decisions put members of the board’s Republican majority at odds with their party’s leaders, who had lobbied extensively for fewer early voting opportunities and the elimination of Sunday voting.
The three-member election boards in all 100 counties in North Carolina are dominated by Republicans because the governor is one. Likewise the state board.
A 4th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled in July that North Carolina’s voter ID law was no good and also rejected the effort to reduce the number of days of early voting from the 17 in 2012 to 10 for this year’s election. Numerous county boards came up with a way around the court by cutting the number of hours on those days. Clever. And sneaky. Perhaps the judges didn’t think politicians would be so brazen as to poke them in the eye.
In one county, the cutback meant there would be fewer than a quarter as many early voting hours available this year as in the election four years ago. Additionally, these times were scheduled only for business hours, with no evenings or weekends. Another poke in the eye, this to people with conventional shifts of work.
You can get a taste of the long-running state board meeting in coverage at the NC Progressive Pulse blog. Here’s a sample from Joe Killian:
* Richmond County, whose lone Democratic county board member Carlton Hawkins was the only one to come before the state board Thursday. He asked the board to restore Sunday voting hours. When asked how the county board’s two Republicans justified rolling back Sunday voting, Hawkins said, “Both of the Republicans are southern Baptist preachers. God don’t want you to vote on Sunday.”
That got a laugh. But his follow up line got a bigger one.
“I told them God don’t want you managing a restaurant on Sunday either,” he said. “But you’re still going to one after church.”
Deep reform is needed. But that will be tough to come by.
North Carolina, and every other state, should set the early voting schedule from the get-go and provide funding for staffing the sites open for this purpose rather than having the counties fight over the matter, often using the excuse that their pinched budgets can’t survive setting aside many hours for early voting.
Every state also should implement vote-by-mail, giving everyone an equal chance to vote early or wait until Election Day to drop off their ballots.
Having every state do its own thing—as the Constitution provides—long ago laid the foundation for bias and partisanship that disadvantages a portion of the electorate. Given the obstacles to change, philosophical and structural, we’re a long way from dumping the mishmash of laws and rules now governing our elections.