Fighting Voter Suppression by NC Republicans

The Republican majority in the North Carolina statehouse demonstrated an abysmal approach to election fairness. They wrangled support from the state Board of Elections and county election boards.

Thankfully Governor Stein vetoed HB 958, a Republican anti-voter bill that proposed to eliminate a week of early voting and allow Republicans to throw out ballots after the election. We can only hope the Republicans don't override his veto. NC Republicans realize the only way they can stay in power is to rig the system by gerrymandering and voter suppression target likely Democratic, unaffiliated voters, younger, and black voters again this year.

Local Boards of Election were pressured by Dallas Woodhouse in the hyper partisan state auditor Dave Boliek's office to eliminate voting sites at historically black Universities/Colleges and Sunday voting, blatantly racist decisions that targeted black voters with surgical precision.

The three Republicans on the State Board of Elections, including Stacy Eggers IV of Boone, then confirmed those cuts by approving final voting plans that eliminated early voting options. They cut Sunday voting in Anson, Chatham, Columbus, Greene, Harnett, Nash, Pasquotank, Pitt, Union, and Wayne counties. They also denied a voting site at NC A&T University, the largest historically black university in the United States. The only way to teach Republicans the lesson that cheating doesn't win is to vote in numbers too big to rig.

They went too far this year. It's time to send a message to every Jim Crow Republican that North Carolina voters have had enough of their post-civil war era voter suppression, gerrymandering racism, and discrimination against black and young voters. Our vote is our superpower to hold crooked politicians accountable when they overreach. Republicans would not be working so hard to take away our right to vote in free and fair elections if our vote didn't matter.