North Carolina Voter Suppression Is Real, and It's Horrifying
"It almost looks like a cattle call, the way people are being purged."
There is a lot of nervous talk about how early-voting turnout seems to be off among those people at whom various Republican governors and their pet state legislatures have spent eight years aiming various voter-suppression laws, a phenomenon that grew exponentially when Chief Justice John Roberts declared the Day of Jubilee in 2013, which the Chief certainly could not have foreseen, neutral umpire that he once swore under oath that he would be.
(And it is here where we remind people that there is nothing new under the sun. The last two chief justices of the Supreme Court—Roberts and the late William Rehnquist—share a significant line on their respective resumes. They both got their start as young Republican lawyers in the field of voter suppression, Rehnquist in Arizona and Roberts in the Reagan Administration. This has been a looooonnnnnng game.)
Down in the newly insane state of North Carolina, where the attack on the franchise has been extraordinarily virulent, a federal district judge named Loretta Biggs has had enough of this bullshit, thank you very much. Per the AP:
Early voting is already underway in the critical swing state that the NAACP has previously sued over other voter access issues. So far, North Carolina's black voter turnout has lagged the 2012 presidential election. The NAACP says counties are violating federal law by removing voters less than 90 days before the election. However, state officials say the process complements federal law and preserves due-process rights. U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs said the process sounds "insane." "This sounds like something that was put together in 1901," she told lawyers for the state. Biggs also said she was "horrified" by the number of removals in Cumberland County, which accounted for most of the statewide total. "It almost looks like a cattle call, the way people are being purged," she told county attorney Rick Moorefield.
Any stories about an "enthusiasm gap" or a "lagging turnout" among certain groups of voters that do not include this campaign to disenfranchise selected voters should be ignored as incomplete. Yes, the inmates are indeed running the asylum, but that's only because the people in charge spent eight years handing over the keys.
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