African American early voting is way down in North Carolina. Why is that?
Click to enlarge in a new tabCounty-by-county tabulation of ballots cast so far by North Carolina’s African American voters during Early Voting (Oct. 20 – 28). Westernmost counties are unshaded because their very small African American voter bases (less than 500 each) render their percentages too volatile to be informative.
The New York Times confirmed this morning what regular readers of our NC Early Voting Dashboard have known for more than a week: more than half way through our 17-day Early Voting period, North Carolina’s African American voters aren’t turning out in anything like their numbers from 2008 and 2012.
Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) activists are probably eager to understand the root cause(s) behind this important (and perhaps even decisive) development. So we’ve crunched the numbers for you.
As the Times’ analysis shows, the Tar Heel State is not alone in this dubious distinction. Black voting is also down in states like Georgia, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado and Iowa. But North Carolina leads that pack by a wide margin. In thinking about why that might be we’ve considered three possible causes: Hurricane Matthew (whose punishing rainfall caused state-of-emergency scale flooding in 32 eastern counties that are home to 30% of the state’s black voters), voter suppression measures imposed by 17 Republican-controlled county boards of elections who shuttered all but a single voting site per county (or, in giant Mecklenburg County’s case, cut from 22 sites in 2012 to just 4 in 2016), and plain-old lack of enthusiasm (in this first election in nearly a decade without an African American candidate at the top of a ticket).
As regards the alternatives of a natural disaster (Hurricane Matthew) versus the man-made disaster of voter suppression, the numbers are pretty revealing:
Click to enlarge in a new tabColumns do not add up to state totals because their categories are not exclusive.
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.
Here’s how these same data look when mapped out county-by-county:
Unimpaired Counties:
Click to enlarge in a new tabDisaster Counties:
Click to enlarge in a new tabThe results here are a little skewed by the coastal counties of Currituck, Dare, Hyde, and Carteret. While those coastal counties did experience damage from Matthew, they saw nothing like the biblical flooding from overflowing rivers that more inland counties suffered. By all accounts, Robeson county on the state’s southeastern border was the hardest hit by flood damage.
Suppressed Counties:
Click to enlarge in a new tabThese are the 17 counties whose Republican-controlled boards of elections drastically cut the number of Week 1 Early Voting sites for 2016. In the most egregious case (Guilford County, in north-central NC) that amounted to a cut from 16 sites in 2012 down to 1 site in 2016. But in terms of sheer numbers of black voters affected, Mecklenburg County (the state’s largest, and home to Charlotte) impacted the most black voters by far (nearly 15% of all the state’s African American voters).
Counties with both disaster and suppression:
Click to enlarge in a new tabThe 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.
2018 is already in vote-suppressors’ crosshairs.
It will be a critical election in NC, determining who will draw the new congressional and General Assembly district boundaries for 2020.
Imagine a world in which voting rights activists, sitting in county boards of elections hearings, have smartphone access to a web app that can evaluate and quantify the voter-suppressive effects of proposed early voting plans in real time.
Imagine how that will help beleaguered and bewildered minority-party board members determine whether a proposed ‘compromise’ EV plan is a good deal…or a sucker’s bet.
You can help turn that imagination into a reality. Volunteer or donate!