From Daily Kos: Early voting is down among black North Carolinians because Republicans designed it

As Laura Clawson noted earlier The New York Times spent some pixels speculating on the early vote, including this snippet: "there were signs of weakness over the weekend, especially among African-Americans in North Carolina, where the turnout as of Saturday night showed that they had not voted at their 2012 levels so far," eventually followed by "because the state significantly curtailed early voting." Yeah, they did. And critical follow-up from Bill Busa shows just what's going on here.

In the 58 counties that have been plagued by neither flooding nor locked polling place doors (Unimpaired Counties) African Americans are voting at 91% of their 2012 rate—not great, but a definite improvement over the statewide rate of just 82%. By contrast, among the 32 counties for which federal disaster declarations are in effect, that rate drops substantially to just 79%. But the man-made disaster of voter suppression proves to be the most potent force of all, depressing the African American voting rate to a mere 72% of 2012’s performance. Interestingly, flooding and voter suppression aren’t additive: among the 7 counties doubly cursed by both, voting action is again 72%. Actually, that makes sense: if there’s no open polling place within a reasonable distance, it hardly matters whether or not a voter is surrounded by water. […]
The take-home lesson here is that Mother Nature hath no fury like a Republican pol scorned: while flooding of biblical proportions certainly hasn’t helped voter turnout, this year voter suppression appears to substantially outstrip Hurricane Matthew as a force depressing North Carolina’s African American vote. Of course, it still must be explained why black voting is also slightly down in the state’s unimpaired counties, and here a variety of factors are no doubt at play, ranging from mild voter disengagement to forms of voter suppression more subtle than locked polling place doors.

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http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/31/1589229/-Early-voting-is-down-among-black-North-Carolinians-because-Republicans-designed-it-that-way#read-more