North Carolina ended sunday voting to reduce black votes

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

https://twitter.com/haroldpollack/statu ... 9899617280
"North Carolina's stated reason for shutting down Sunday voting was that counties with heavy Sunday voting were disproportionately African-American, and that African-Americans tended to be Democrats.

[Yukaphile]

Might as well just dissolve elections altogether and make it a dictatorship. We're not really a democracy. Let's just make it official.

[Antiboyscout]

Hey, you don't want disproportionate representation do you?

[Worffan101]

Yes, this has been openly part of the Republican plan since as early as 2012. Back then, a PA rep was caught on tape saying that their "voter ID" bill was intended to help Romney win by depressing Democratic turnout.

They've backed themselves into a corner by pandering to an increasingly small, old, and outdated minority of increasingly racist, Kool-Aid drinking voters, and now the only way they can actually win swing states is to depress the (always lower) Dem turnout as much as possible.

Basically, the Democrats have the support of a pretty decent majority of the country--like, 60% or more. But their turnout is lower, or was until Gen Z (MUCH more politically active than previous gens) started coming to the polls. Whereas the Republicans cornered the market on old people, who have the time and money on their hands to vote. It was a smart strategy in the '80s when the youth and young-professional vote grew up under Nixon and so was so dissilusioned by that guy's bullshit that they lost their faith in the system, but now, with an extremely angry, increasingly left-wing generation that suffered 8 years of objectively awful Republican rule, 8 years of naked and pointless Republican obstructionism, and now a new wave of right-wing domestic terrorism under the worst President since JAMES FUCKING BUCHANAN, basically the Republicans are fucked for the next 20 years unless they can gut Dem turnout below like 30%.

[clearspira]

Here in Britain we only vote on a Thursday. I didn't really have any point to make here, I just find the idea that Sunday voting makes THAT big of a difference to be perplexing.

[Yukaphile]

Sounds like early voting.

[Deledrius]

I just find the idea that Sunday voting makes THAT big of a difference to be perplexing.

I suspect it would vary by state and even by county pretty wildly, but in some parts of this country, it's sadly not a stretch to imagine it making all the difference in the world (and, for those people, the next as well).

[Robovski]

You could vote by mail if the date isn't convenient. You have to tell them you want to vote that way in advance but it's how I've voted for years.

[Worffan101]

Here in Britain we only vote on a Thursday. I didn't really have any point to make here, I just find the idea that Sunday voting makes THAT big of a difference to be perplexing.

Sunday church visits are a big part of African-American social life in the South. Everybody does that. So to make sure black people exercise that right to vote that all US citizens have, churches organize shuttle buses and "souls to the polls" days and stuff. By ending Sunday early voting, that essentially leaves these people, most of whom are poor because Reagan and his incompetent crime policies managed to miss the drug lords to shoot the nascent black middle class in the guts (largely because Reagan was a racist moron barely capable of blowing his own nose without assistance, frankly I'm surprised nobody's pissed on that idiot rat bastard's grave yet), without a convenient opportunity to vote--since they're largely poor, voting on a weekday is effectively out of the question since they've got to work to stay alive.

This is related to lower-class voting being typically low; the rich LOVE to make it harder to vote and throw up roadblocks like sending open letters out saying "if Obama beats Romney don't count on having a job the next morning"* or demanding that people work on voting day or lose their jobs. Frankly, election day should be a national holiday every 2 years. Period. And state holidays should be arranged for special elections.

*Yes, that actually happened in the 2012 election. Scumbag tactics go as far back as John Adams trying to rig the elections and putting a nakedly partisan Justice on the Supreme Court, much like Twitler tried to do recently. Yes, Trump combines the obscene corruption and power-grabbing nastiness of John Adams with the callous incompetence of Buchanan and the selfish oiliness of Nixon, not to mention the raging idiocy of Reagan on steroids and he doesn't even look good on TV. About the only reason he isn't the worst President ever yet is that James Buchanan ACTUALLY started a war and tried to start a religious war so that the North wouldn't lynch him for sucking Southern cock (figuratively and in the case of his boyfriend literally) at every opportunity.

To be fair, Trump also lacks Pierce's fanatical support of actual fucking slavery and Fillmore's wishy-washy indecision, but that's a low bar to clear--even Buchanan cleared that bar, but he was far worse in other ways.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

These kinds of shady tactics aren't fair or moral, but honestly I have a hard time mustering much sympathy. The majority of states allow for early voting or for no-excuse absentee ballots. North Carolina is a state that allows for both. The reason most people don't vote isn't because it's that difficult, but because they don't care enough to put up with even mild inconvenience in order to do so.