I want to thank a reader, who will remain unnamed because I don't have his permission to name him, of the Black Intelligentsia Blog for inspiring today's post. On Saturday, I posted on this blog about the invalidation of North Carolina's harsh racially motivated voter ID laws, by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A reader sent me a link to an incredible Washington Post article that chronicles the racially targeted and motivated mechanisms that guided the North Carolina Legislature's adoption of the state's voting measures, targeted with "surgical precision" (in the Court's language) to disenfranchise African-Americans. Thank you for calling this article to my attention!
The "smoking gun" was very specific. North Carolina lawmakers gathered data on racial differences in voting patterns. The data revealed that African-Americans lacked state identification issued by the DMV in larger proportions compared to Whites. The eventual law passed required that only identification issued by the North Carolina DMV would be acceptable identification to vote. Ironically, this just so happened to be the type of identification that Whites possessed most prevalently. Data also showed that Blacks were more likely to vote in the first seven (7) days of the state's early voting period. Lawmaker's decided to eliminate the first seven (7) days of early voting, particularly Sunday voting, to stifle Black and Democratic leaning voting patterns. Overall, the number of days for early voting was decreased from 17 to 10 days.
This article is mind boggling, I encourage you to take the time to read it in full:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/
Pat McCrory, North Carolina's Governor, promises to fight on and appeal the decision and explore alternative means to employ the law. How could Governor McCrory defend a law that is so indefensible?
Thanks, Joseph. Sad. The only surprising part of this is how the GOP left a clear cut trail of evidence of their intent to discriminate.
ReplyDeleteIf this happened in a job situation, the employer would be facing criminal charges, I would think