A Republican-sponsored NC Senate bill, SB 657, has been introduced that, if enacted, would severely cripple the state’s One Stop Early Voting/Same-day Voter Registration law that helped President Barack Obama win North Carolina in 2008. Indeed, the bill would eliminate same-day registration, an important tool of voter empowerment for communities of color, proponents say.
The goal, critics say, is to make the 2012 presidential election harder for Obama and the Democrats to win. Coupled with GOP control of redistricting, and the party’s legislative push for voter ID which critics like the NC NAACP charge is an attempt at voter suppression of black and Hispanic voters, attorney Irving Joyner, chair of the NCNAACP’s Legal Redress Committee, says SB 657 must be opposed.
”The bill is a disguise, in a sense, to go after the minority community vote,” Joyner told The Wilmington Journal last week. ”It is being presented as an effort to stop fraud in the election process.”
”So it’s a thinly disguised effort to cut back on those progressive successes from a couple of years ago that expanded the opportunities for African-Americans, Hispanics and poor people…to get out here and participate in the political discourse,” Joyner added.
Full Article: The Wilmington Journal – Wilmington, NC : Thu May 05 2011 18:49:19 GMT+0200 (CEST).