current event essay
lebneneAugust 31, 2016
Current Event #1
Critics Say North Carolina Is Curbing Black Vote. Again.
“Critics Say North Carolina Is Curbing Black Vote. Again.” New York Times, August 30th, 2016 Link to Article
In the article “Critics say North Carolina Is Curbing Black Vote. Again”, author Michael Wines explains the current situation with regards to the upcoming presidential election and voting in the state of North Carolina. The article references the 2013 election law that was recently overturned by the Supreme court and explains how the law had negatively affected African American voters. The 2013 voting law was said to have created an advantage for the Republican party as the law “cut the state’s early voting period to 10 days from 17 and eliminated a Sunday balloting day”. According to the appeals court this change profoundly affected the African American vote as a “disproportionate number of African-Americans voted early — especially during the first week of balloting that the law abolished — and that voting after Sunday church services had become an African-American tradition”.
The question at hand today was raised by the proposal made by two republicans in which they requested dramatic changes to be made to the early voting period. The proposal called for only “106.5 hours of early voting before the Nov. 8 election — less than a quarter of the time allowed in the 2012 presidential election — and to limit early balloting to a single polling place in the county seat of a largely rural eastern North Carolina county that sprawls over 403 square miles”. This would mean that again like the 2013 voting law, African American voters would have less time to participate in early voting in addition to having to travel long distances.
I found the article to be quite fascinating. I was not aware that there could be different laws for voting. I am curios to learn more about the process that lies behind making these changes and having the changes become a law. After reading this article I was shocked to see that the 2013 voting law was passed and disregarded the evidence on the effects that it would potentially have for the African American voter. I can certainly understand why the law was overturned by the Supreme Court. It just seems silly to see that the republican party would try to propose a very similar change this year specially after the reactions that the 2013 voting law received. North Carolina has been known to be a swing state and as the article confirms it is primarily democratic state with this in mind it seems like a cheap shot to try manipulate the voting laws to discourage the African American voter by making it harder for them to come out and vote, it almost seems like the republicans are sort of cheating.
Word Count: 434