How The GOP Blocked The Vote In North Carolina

OpEdNews, 11-24-14

   

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Over the summer and into the fall, while polls showed other Senate Democrats in swing states like Colorado and Iowa falling behind their GOP challengers, incumbent North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan had consistently clung to a small lead.

In the end, Hagan lost by less than two points, defeated 48.8 percent - 47.3 percent by her Republican opponent Thom Tillis, Speaker of the GOP-led N.C. House.

Here are three reasons Democratic voter turnout missed the mark on election night:

(1) Black voters turned out at record levels, but their votes weren't enough.

After the GOP seized control of the North Carolina legislature in 2010, and won the Governor's mansion in 2012, they pushed through the nation's most restrictive new voting laws. Experts described them as the worst voter suppression measures passed by any state since the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.

Besides mandating unreasonably strict Voter ID provisions (no student ID's, no public employee ID's) and cutting one week of early voting, they repealed several laws designed to make voting easier and more convenient for citizens that had been in place for years. Same-day voter registration during early voting and out-of-precinct voting on election day were both abolished. These efforts to block the vote may have provided Tillis with his margin of victory, and have been universally recognized as a blatant attempt to make it more difficult for core Democratic constituencies to cast ballots, including African-Americans, low income voters, and students.

In response, North Carolina's black community and progressive allies organized to fight back. One of the largest ever efforts to mobilize black voters in North Carolina in a non-presidential year was launched, spearheaded by Democrats, voting rights groups, and the state NAACP. And even with President Obama not on the ballot, African-American voters still turned out for Kay Hagan.

In Durham County, a bastion of black and white liberal voters in North Carolina, Hagan received 70,601 votes, or 76.6 percent of the votes cast. Mecklenburg County is home to Charlotte, the state's largest city, and another source of black voting strength. Democrats and independent voters outnumber Republicans there by 3-1. Hagan got 156,533 votes in Mecklenburg, or 59.2 percent to Tillis' 38.1 percent.

Durham and Mecklenburg counties alone delivered 50,000 more votes for Hagan than were cast there for Democratic nominee for Senate Elaine Marshall in 2010.

Exit polls showed black voters were 21 percent of the North Carolina electorate this year, which equaled their numbers in 2008, when Barack Obama narrowly won North Carolina, and only slightly down from 23 percent in 2012. Fully 96 percent of them chose Hagan.

But their numbers fell short, because:

(2) Partly due to a relentless attack ad barrage funded by right-wing outside groups, Hagan's support shrank among white voters.

Hagan got just 33 percent of the white vote, according to exit polls, a drop from the 39 percent she received in 2008 when she was first elected to the Senate. That year, Hagan won white voters age 18-29 by a margin of 60 percent - 36 percent, but in 2014, they voted for Republican Thom Tillis by 56 percent - 32 percent. White voters who didn't attend college made up 35 percent of the electorate, and they backed Tillis by a crushing 69 percent - 25 percent.

Through most of the summer, Hagan maintained a small lead in the polls by hitting Tillis hard for his role in cutting the state's education budget. In early October, Tillis threw everything he had at Hagan in a bid to improve his poll numbers among white voters. He began attacking her over foreign policy, exploiting voters' fears about the Islamic State's military gains in Iraq and Syria and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He also tied her to a phony controversy over stimulus grants that went to a company co-owned by her husband.

Tillis started gaining traction with ads that called Hagan out for missing an Armed Services Committee hearing back in February where the Islamic State was discussed. Karl Rove's dark money group Crossroads GPS followed suit. One featured the mother of a Marine who told viewers, "It makes me so mad to see how the President's weakness has allowed the Islamic State to grow. And Senator Hagan? She just goes right along with him." The ad closed with a hard-hitting plea: "We can't let our kids die in vain. We have to change our Senator."

   

   

In a state with a strong military presence, polls showed the message had an impact. Support for Tillis ticked slightly upwards. Exit polls revealed the 16 percent of N.C. voters who were veterans chose Tillis over Hagan by 55 percent - 43 percent. The 11 percent of voters who thought foreign policy was the nation's top issue went with Tillis by a 68 percent - 31 percent margin.

The Tillis campaign tried to spin their win as due to their targeting of "GOP areas where their voters turned out in past elections but they felt more could vote." Tillis' chief campaign strategist Paul Shumaker "pointed to places such as Rowan, Cabarrus and Catawba counties."

Actually, in these three heavily white counties, Tillis received 1500 less votes than N.C.'s senior Republican Senator Richard Burr in 2010, and nearly 7500 more votes were cast for Hagan than for Burr's challenger Elaine Marshall.

The areas supposedly key to Tillis' victory instead illustrate how statewide, Tillis did worse than the last Republican to win a Senate race in a midterm election by about 35,000 votes, and Hagan got nearly a quarter million more votes than the last unsuccessful Democratic Senate candidate. Tillis didn't turn out more white voters than in 2010, but he benefited because too few white Democrats were fired up enough about Kay Hagan to vote this year.

(3) Not enough young voters turned out.

All 18-29 year-olds backed Hagan 53 percent - 39 percent, but they only made up 12 percent of voters, down from 16 percent in 2012. Voter support for Tillis roughly increased with age levels, and senior citizens age 65 and older favored him by a margin of 57 percent - 42 percent. Senior voters made up 23 percent of the electorate, with nearly twice as many casting ballots as 18-29 year-olds.

One reason for such low turnout by young voters was the state's new restrictive voting laws. As part of their strategy to suppress the Democratic vote, N.C. Republicans made special efforts to discourage students from voting. Under the new Voter ID statute, college student ID's are unacceptable. Students now need a North Carolina driver's license or special state-issued ID in order to vote, which created huge obstacles to participation by out-of-state students. Republican-controlled local election boards in counties with large universities moved early voting sites off campuses and pushed through other changes that made it harder for students to get to the polls.

The state's abolition of same-day registration during early voting left untold numbers of people unable to vote simply because they had moved within N.C. since the last time they voted. They were turned away from the polls when they went to update their addresses during early voting, a practice that had been allowed for years before this election.

This deliberate attempt to make it harder to vote disproportionately affected young people, students and non-students alike, because they move more often. But it also disenfranchised older citizens like disabled veteran Bryan McGowan, who served 22 years in the Marine Corps, including four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was prevented from voting on October 23 in Western North Carolina.

What happened this year to Bryan and other N.C. voters like him is a mockery of democracy. But the GOP can't be sure of winning races any other way. And their attempts to fix the game further in their favor in North Carolina have now led to a truly unfortunate election result for America.

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GOP Voter Intimidation Efforts Are In Full Swing

The Huffington Post, 11-4-14

   

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With the Nov. 4 elections now days away, last minute voter intimidation tactics intended to benefit Republican candidates are being reported nationwide.

In Kentucky, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's campaign has sent out official-looking mailers that scream, "ELECTION VIOLATION NOTICE." The mailers claim to contain "facts related to a possible fraud being perpetrated on citizens across Kentucky," and warn voters that "You are at risk of acting on fraudulent information."

Inside, the text of the mailers reads as if they were sent from election boards, claiming "information that has been red-flagged as 100% false is being purposely spread by the campaign of the federal candidate named below: Alison Lundergan Grimes."

Haven King, the Clerk of Perry County, Kentucky, contacted WYMT News about the mailers on Halloween. "This means nothing; I don't know what people are trying to do," said King. "There's nothing fraudulent to my knowledge going on and the people in Perry County if you are registered to vote, you will be able to vote and you will be able to vote at your precinct."

McConnell's Democratic challenger, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, immediately filed suit seeking to stop the mailers from being distributed, and called for a state and federal investigation. The mailers appear to have violated at least two Kentucky statutes that are punishable by felony charges.

Also in Kentucky, the Attorney General's office has received a complaint about voter intimidation directed towards college students. A full page ad was published in the Berea Citizen warning students that their right to vote is "subject to be challenged" if they go to the polls this year, and students who are found to be registered improperly "could face significant penalties."

The vice president of Berea College Student Government, Jacob Burdette, called it "an attempt at voter suppression," and told students not to be discouraged from voting. "Our message is, if you consider Berea home and you've taken steps to make it such, with regards to voting, go vote." The group behind the ad was labeled "Concerned Citizens of Berea," and the newspaper's publisher would only identify them as a "group of private citizens."

Groups like Claim Your Vote have been fighting back against this sort of phony information being used to mislead students, which comes on the heels of GOP-led efforts to block the student vote in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

One particular type of voter intimidation cropping up around the country this year is voter shaming.

In Iowa, Republican National Committee-sponsored ads are appearing in Facebook users' news feeds, implying that their neighbors will know if they don't vote Republican. Which is, of course, totally false.

In Florida, where incumbent Republican Governor Rick Scott is locked in a tight battle with former Governor Charlie Crist, an Orlando-based PAC called Citizens for a Better Florida Inc. has sent out mailers that threaten to reveal who voted in the group's next mailing, to be delivered after the election. The front of the mailers state, "Your Neighbors Will Know. It's Public Record."

The PAC's money comes from the Realtors Political Advocacy Committee, which shares the same address with Citizens for a Better Florida.

According to the Tampa Bay Times:

Records show the group formed in 2008 and has raised more than $2 million, much of which it has used to assist the campaigns of Gov. Rick Scott and other statewide Republican candidates.

Over the past month alone, the Realtors Political Advocacy Committee raised almost $1 million, including $795,000 from the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors.

Voter intimidation tactics like these recall the ugly ways that African-American votes in the South were suppressed during much of the twentieth century. As recently as 1990, postcards were mailed to 125,000 black voters in North Carolina threatening them with jail if they voted. The postcards went out in the closing days of the hotly contested U.S. Senate race between incumbent GOP Senator Jesse Helms and his Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte, a race Helms won by 107,000 votes.

N.C. students protesting apartheid cross paths with Helms, 1984

Why do the Republicans feel a need to engage in such shady voter intimidation schemes year after year? Why are they so afraid of letting people go to the polls and choosing whichever candidates they prefer, free from interference with their right to vote?

Maybe they realize that if voters were allowed to make up their own minds, too many of them might refuse to be intimidated by GOP scare tactics any longer.

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Help Us Defeat Jesse Helms

This year may be our state's last, best chance to rid the U.S. Senate of the corrosive influence of Jesse Helms. As young North Carolinians, we are working hard to register and mobilize 100,000 of our fellow young N.C. voters who realize Helms represents the past. But we need your help to make the difference this fall and retire Jesse Helms once and for all!

Dear Active Citizen,

For more than two decades, the power of the far right has increased steadily in America. Groundwork for 1994's frightening takeover of Congress by radical Republicans was laid by years of behind-the-scenes organizing.

Cheerleading and nurturing the conservative movement every step of the way has been the right's elder statesman - North Carolina's own Senator, Jesse Helms, R-N.C. His high office and mastery of Senate rules have long allowed him to be a brutally effective roadblock against progressive legislation that would benefit average North Carolinians. At the same time, his position has given him a national bully pulpit to fan the flames of far-right causes such as anti-gay bigotry, repeal of laws protecting our environment, censorship, and the abolition of women's right to choose.

The North Carolina Participatory Democracy Project is a grassroots, youth-led organization set up to re-connect citizens with the democratic process. One of our primary focuses this year is working across North Carolina to register 100,000 young voters in time for the 1996 fall elections - a figure that would have changed the results of the 1990 Gantt-Helms race. During the past six years, registration drives organized by N.C. PDP have already added nearly 20,000 young N.C. voters to the rolls.

In four closely fought elections, Helms' margins of victory have always been razor thin. The times have changed, but Helms has not. Over the years, his status as a creature from the South's ugly past has become more apparent to North Carolinians embarrassed by our Senator's callous comments, tired of his unceasing negativity, and sick of the unflattering attention he almost daily brings to our state.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the minds of our state's young voters, who voted against Helms by a wide margin in 1990. At N.C. State University, students cast 81% of their votes for challenger Harvey Gantt. At UNC-Chapel Hill, Gantt received 84% of all student votes.

Volunteers with our N.C. Youth Empowerment Project are working now to register voters across the state and organizing on college campuses to set up large-scale registration drives for the fall. We are reaching out to young voters in non-traditional ways, making voter registration accessible to them at concerts, festivals, record stores, and other convenient sites.

N.C. PDP also provides funding and logistical help to Musicians Organized for Voter Education (MOVE), a coalition of N.C. performers and musicians founded in 1990. MOVE members oppose the threat to free speech Helms represents and are committed to encouraging their audiences to register and vote in this fall's elections.

In November, Helms will again face his dynamic 1990 challenger, former Charlotte, N.C. mayor Harvey Gantt. Their re-match promises to be among the most watched political races in the country. This time around, progressives in North Carolina are prepared to more than match the resources and efforts that have given Helms his slim margins of victory in the past. But we must pull together and stand united in this fight, and we need your help. By making a contribution to N.C. PDP and our work through the N.C. Youth Empowerment Project and MOVE, your aid will be especially effective.

We are focusing our voter registration and education efforts on a group overlooked by other organized drives now underway in North Carolina - young voters. In the process, we are laying the groundwork for a more progressive future for our state. It is essential that young people develop habits of voting and becoming informed about election issues. In the long term, we see this as crucial to reversing the decline of citizen political participation so evident today.

Few special efforts have been made by election boards in N.C. to reach out to young voters and provide them with convenient access to voter registration. When the opportunity to participate has been extended to young voters through our work in recent elections, they have voted in large numbers.

Please join us in this fight by making a contribution of $25, $50, or more if you can. Over the past six years, registration drives organized by N.C. PDP have added nearly 20,000 young N.C. voters to the rolls - all on a nearly non-existent budget. Imagine what we can accomplish this year with your support.

Recent news from the national political battlefields has shown that no part of the progressive agenda is safe when far-right ideologues are elected to public office. In North Carolina, we have endured the presence of one such demagogue long enough. From race-baiting in 1950 to deny Frank Porter Graham a Senate seat, to demonizing AIDS victims in the 1990s, Helms' influence on our state's proud political tradition has been profoundly long-lasting and negative.

With your help, this year we can finally send Jesse Helms and his lack of vision for our state to history's dustbin - where they belong.

Sincerely,

Erik Ose
Director, N.C. Participatory Democracy Project