The Old North State (Of Insanity, Yet Again)

Everything the Republican Party in North Carolina is trying to do right now involves them trying to make sure Democrats never regain power in the state again.  That means voting in the state must be curtailed as much as possible, and the latest GOP scam is reducing the number of places to vote "to save taxpayers money". Of course, the cuts are coming in poorer urban areas where Democrats live.  One such place is Shelby, NC, near where I grew up. Cleveland County is losing 3 or its 5 voting precincts, and they just happen to be in areas where black voters are.

When Alan Langley, a Republican member of the local elections board here, explains a new proposal to consolidate five voting precincts into two, it sounds procedural and well-meaning: He speaks of convenient parking and wheelchair access at the proposed polling places, and of saving more than $10,000 per election. 

Those precincts, however, are rich with black voters who generally vote Democratic. And when the Rev. Dante Murphy, the president of the Cleveland CountyN.A.A.C.P. chapter, discusses the plan, he talks of “disenfranchisement” and “conspiracy.” 

“We know,” Mr. Murphy said, “that this is part of a bigger trend — a movement to suppress people’s right to vote.” 

The bitter disagreement in this city of 20,000 is part of a broader voting rights battle charged by race and partisan politics that is happening in a number of communities, many of them Southern, where changes to election laws no longer require advance approval from the federal government after a year-old Supreme Court ruling voided a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

Mr. Langley here is shocked -- shocked, he'll tell you -- that anyone would attribute racial animus to these precinct cuts.  Cuts in a predominately black part of the county, of course.  He's hurt that the NAACP doesn't trust Republicans in North Carolina.  Republicans who instituted multiple hoops to jump through in order to vote in the worst set of voter ID laws in the nation to prevent "voter fraud" they accused Democrats of perpetrating, and they speak of trust.

Sure.

Voting rights advocates fear that these local changes — combined with a number of new state laws restricting ballot access and requiring voters to show picture IDs — amount to a concerted effort to reduce voting by minority groups. Conservatives say that the laws ensure against voter fraud, and in some cases are more cost-efficient. 

In places affected by the Supreme Court decision, the overt racism of the 1960s is largely a thing of the past: What often lingers is a racial mistrust that can make the moving of a polling place from a fellowship hall to a public park seem innocent to some, sinister to others. 

It's a hard past to overcome.  It's even harder when one party is trying to take the country back to the worst times of that past.

Who honestly believes that the solution to a county's problems is making it harder to vote?