State Board of Elections decisions turn back voter suppression
Published September 7, 2013
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, September 5, 2013.
Voter suppression has no place in a 21st century democracy. This week, several efforts to suppress the votes of college students were rightly turned back.
Locally, the Forsyth County Board of Elections voted 2-1 to table a motion from Republican Chairman Ken Raymond that would have discriminated against students at Winston-Salem State University. Raymond had suggested implementing a stricter set of residency criteria for students at the traditionally African-American campus, declining to accept verification of residency from the WSSU housing office.
In Raleigh, the Republican-controlled State Board of Elections unanimously overturned the decision of the Pasquotank County Board of Elections and allowed a student at Elizabeth City State University, another traditionally black school, to run for his city council.
The Republican-controlled county board of elections had said that the student, Montravias King, had not met the burden of proof of residency to run for office and also questioned whether a candidate may claim a dorm as a place of residence. The case had ramifications far beyond King. As his lawyer, Clare Barnet, said, “This is a case about whether students across the state can be denied the right to vote.”
The law was clearly on King’s side. The state Supreme Court ruled decades ago that a college dorm is a suitable and legal domicile for voting and political participation. But he had to demonstrate that he truly resided in that dorm room. He did so in Raleigh.
A third victory was won when the State Board’s executive director, Kim Strach, ex-pressed her concerns about a Watauga County Board of Elections plan to combine three voting precincts, thus squeezing more than 9,300 voters, many of them Appalachian State University students, into one not-easily-accessible polling site. Strach must sign off on such major changes, and she appropriately found it suspect, despite those who said the combination would ease confusion about where to vote. The county board withdrew the plan, the Journal's Bertrand M. Gutierrez reported.
Voter suppression, whether in the form of North Carolina’s new voter identification law or a rigged map of voting precincts, is a violation of the American principles. Voting must be open and accessible to all registered voters.
September 7, 2013 at 8:31 am
Richard Bunce says:
Voter suppression acts; at least 18, US citizen, resident/domicile, registered, not in prison, not a felon, alive. The US and NC Constitutions are voter suppression. Anything short of anyone can vote anywhere, anytime, as often as they want, from anywhere they want is voter suppression... per the reasoning of the anti ID crowd.
September 7, 2013 at 8:41 am
TP Wohlford says:
And the votes must NOT be negated by the hundreds of cases of voter fraud documented, mostly on the side of the party that decries these changes.
You see, other states have more draconian standards than those just passed. And in those states -- far from "voter suppression" -- we see minority voting rates increase. We can debate all of the history, and we can debate whether it's such a big deal to have a photo ID, but we can NOT debate the facts established for us in places like Michigan and Georgia -- both states with equally tragic race histories as North Carolina.
But hey, now I'm asking you to report facts...
