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Gaston County Electoral Officer Adam Ragan tests equipment.
Alexandra Olgin / WFAE
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Alexandra Olgin / WFAE
Gaston County Electoral Officer Adam Ragan tests equipment.
Alexandra Olgin / WFAE
Voters in North Carolina are once again facing changes in the state's management of elections. At a time when early voting is becoming increasingly popular in the country, a new law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature will result in a nearly 20% reduction in the number of votes cast before polling day.
Democrats say the changes may disproportionately affect African-American voters, but some local Republican officials are also complaining about these changes, arguing that they impose too much control over the election administration and constitute a unfunded mandate of the state.
The state's 17-day advance voting period, which begins Wednesday, is extremely popular. More than 60 percent of voters in North Carolina voted early in the 2016 election, according to the state's electoral council.
In Gaston County, just west of Charlotte, the Chief Electoral Officer, Adam Ragan, said the county had reduced the number of its advance polling booths from five to three as a result of the election. adoption of the law in June. The law requires that all sites in a county be open from 7 am to 7 pm. during the week. Previously, counties, responsible for the administration of elections, were free to define the number of hours of opening of advance polling sites.
"I would have loved to have more advance polling stations," said Ragan. "It boiled down to having more offices, helping more electors to fulfill our fiduciary responsibilities to the county."
North Carolina is at zero in partisan election wars of the last decade. Since 2010, a number of laws passed by the Republican-controlled legislature on voter identification, constituency and advance voting have been overturned by the courts at different times.
When the Legislature debated the Advance Voting Act in June, the Democratic State representative, Amos Quick, said that if an advance polling site was open on weekends, all of the Remaining sites of a county were also to be opened, which could discourage counties from weekend hours.
"Early voting this weekend has been preferred (…) by some people," Quick said, referring to African-American voters. "Some people whose right to vote has not only been put forward, but also protected by recent judicial decisions."
In 2016, a Federal Court of Appeal ruled on a 2013 law providing for a one-week reduction in advance voting, as well as the elimination of same-day registrations and off-seat votes targeting voters. African-Americans with "surgical precision".
The panel of three judges of 4th The US Federal Court of Appeal wrote that GOP lawmakers had asked for racial data on the failure of the use of advance polls. After learning that more African Americans, who generally supported Democrats, had voted early against white voters, they amended the bill to eliminate early voting.
The Republican state representative, David Lewis, who defended the most recent changes to early voting this summer, said during the debate on the bill that the goal was to minimize confusion for voters. voters.
"What we have decided to do is make it more reliable and safer for voters to know that their county's advance voting site (s) were open from a fixed time in the morning to a fixed time in the evening. , "he said, also noting that across the state, early voting sites will be open for a greater number of hours.
While Republicans from the powerful state legislature support the law, at the county level, the law has faced a bipartisan opposition.
"Frustrated is the word I would like to use," said Ron Wyatt, president of the Iredell County GOP. The county, located north of Charlotte, halved its early voting sites because of the law.
Wyatt argues that the law contradicts the general emphasis put by Republicans on local control and that this translates into an unfunded mandate for the counties.
Rural counties with smaller electoral budgets like Iredell are disproportionately affected by this change. Although individual polling places may be open longer, there will be 17% fewer sites in this election, according to the state's electoral council.
For voters, convenience takes precedence over long working hours, said Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at MIT, who studies the administration of the vote.
"Many research suggests that when a polling place gets away from the elector, it has less chances to vote," Stewart said.
Stewart speculated that the new legislation could shift the voting vote from the advance polling period to polling day, which could result in longer queues at the polling station.
In a state where the right to vote has become such a political potato, election officials say that they are accustomed to adapting it on short notice.
"Because of lawsuits, the legislation takes into account that sort of thing," said Becky Galliher, chief electoral officer for Iredell County. "It seems that we always have something in every election that takes us in a different direction."
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