Report: North Carolina Struggles with Voting Discrimination
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 5/15/2006
For most Americans, heading to the polls on Election Day is routine - the meat and potatoes of democracy.Most don't have to worry that they might be turned away or given false information. They certainly can't imagine appealing to their state Supreme Court to exercise their right to vote or have their ballots counted.
But for many black voters in North Carolina these are stark realities, according to a report by RenewtheVRA.org.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has intervened 45 times in North Carolina since 1982 to protect minorities from voting procedure changes that would block or dilute their votes. And almost half of the state's counties are required to submit voting or election changes to DOJ, according to a new report from RenewtheVRA.org.
"It's discouraging to see such a large number of unnecessary and discriminatory attempts to silence minority voters," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
In one of the most glaring examples of voter disenfranchisement, Onslow County used an election method for nearly 20 years that diminished blacks' chances of electing their candidate without submitting it to DOJ for approval, as required by the VRA. Finally, a court ordered the county to throw out the method in 1988
In the 2004 federal election, the state Supreme Court disenfranchised 12,000 voters because they had cast ballots outside of their designated precincts. Blacks were represented in this group at twice their rate in the electorate. Many had never been told where they should vote or had been assured by precinct officials that their votes would count.
Before that, in 1990, 125,000 blacks received postcards the day before the election falsely claiming that they could not vote if they had moved in the previous 30 days.
The report also exposes instances of voter intimidation in North Carolina. During the 2004 general election, polling officials were observed turning away voters without justification, altering voting registers to show that black voters had already voted when they had not, and posting signs saying that voting would take place at a later date.
And in one particularly egregious case, the entire staff of the Duplin County Board of Elections had to be removed in 2002 in the wake of allegations that they intimidated minority voters, changed voter addresses without authorization and altered signatures.
"The continuing pervasiveness of discrimination means we must remain vigilant," said Anita Earls, the report's author. "The failure to reauthorize the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act would have devastating consequences for North Carolina's minority voters,"
The VRA, considered one of the most successful civil rights legislation ever enacted, prohibits discrimination based on race.
Three key provisions of the VRA will expire in August 2007 if Congress does not act now to renew them: Section 5, which requires preclearance of voting changes in states and localities with a history of voting discrimination, Section 203, which require counties where more than 5 percent of citizens are not native English speakers to provide language assistance, and Sections 6-9, which authorize DOJ to send federal examiners and observers to monitor elections.
A bicameral bill, HR 9/S 2703, introduced on May 2, would reauthorize these provisions for another 25 years.
RenewtheVRA.org is a collaboration of national organizations with long experience in protecting minority voting rights. It includes the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the NAACP and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, ACLU, and Asian American Justice Center.
