In N.C., early voting up for all but Black voters

In an election where early voting became more popular, a divide emerged along racial lines. Some blame cuts to polling places.

By Langston Taylor

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2016 saw a surge in early voting for most of North Carolina's voting population. According to the state's elections board's data on "one-stop," in-person, early voting, 10 percent more early ballots came from white voters than in 2012 ...

and Asian early voters surged dramatically,

as did Native Americans ...

and other racial minorities, except for

Black early voters, who dropped sharply. No other measured racial group turned out fewer early voters than four years ago.

The total vote count for 2016 shows the size of the disparity. Nearly 80,000 fewer Black people in North Carolina voted early than in 2012, while the state as a whole saw an increase. At the same time, early turnout was nearly 195,000 higher among white voters.

The drop was across the board. Eighty-one of 100 counties saw Black early voting turnout fall. (Graham County, which increased from 0 to 1 Black voter, is not shown.)

According to Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who runs an elections data service, North Carolina stands out. He found that in other southern states collecting data on the race of early voters, Black turnout remained steady.

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Part of the drop in the Black share of early voters may be explained by cuts to early polling places. HB 589, the law overturned by a federal court for what it called a "surgical" targeting of Black voters, would have allowed counties to cut the first week of early voting. Without the law in place, each county was required to maintain at least one open location for that week.

Seventeen counties then closed all but the legal minimum of one location for the first seven days. Voters in those 17 counties - Alamance, Brunswick, Craven, Gaston, Guilford, Henderson, Jackson, Johnston, Mecklenburg, Nash, Northampton, Onslow, Polk, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson and Wayne - skew Black compared to the rest of the state. The Black share of early voters there is about 6 percentage points higher.

The blog Insightus found turnout in those counties initially trailed the rest of the state dramatically, and that Black turnout among early voters never recovered.

When the early voting period concluded, a press release from the North Carolina Republican party noted the drop in Black turnout as an “encouraging” trend.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist and former Democratic nominee for president, visited North Carolina A&T State University in Guilford County on Oct. 30. Jackson said North Carolina officials were engaging in “schemes to disenfranchise my race.”

“As long as (drawing districts and establish polling places are) states’ rights, states will continue to manipulate, to control, gerrymander, for their own purposes,” he said.

Volunteers at the polls said they also struggled with informing potential voters of their rights. They said many had heard of the law requiring a state identification to vote but didn’t know it had been struck down.

That nearly included Khalif Williams, a voter in Pasquotank County, where nearly 2 in 5 residents is Black. Pasquotank cut its number of Election Day polling places from 13 to nine, the biggest cut by percentage in the state.

Williams, a Black 22-year-old from Elizabeth City, voted around 6:30 p.m. on Election Day, an hour before polls closed. He wasn’t planning to vote, until he found out he could do so without an ID, just three hours before that.

Williams said he was a fan of allowing voting without an ID.

“It keeps things simple,” he said.

Paulette Spelman, a retired school teacher of thirty years and mother of eight, was waiting in the parking lot in front of River Road Middle School while her daughter voted inside.

She said she voted early to avoid long lines.

“I can't stand that long,” she said.

Though she said the poll closures were inconvenient for some, she remained optimistic about voting in North Carolina.

“I believe in the system,” she said.

When the dust had settled, voters narrowly removed incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, while the GOP retained its senator, Richard Burr, and its supermajority in the state legislature.

On Nov. 18, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who carried the state, pledged to nominate Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as Secretary of State. Sessions was blocked from becoming a federal judge in 1986 after accusations of racial prejudice and questions surrounding his role in a voter fraud case brought against black community organizers.

Nearly three weeks after election day, Trump claimed that millions had voted illegally for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, which Politifact rated a "pants on fire" falsehood.