Despite North Carolina vote changes, groups may go to court

About a week after the initial vote last month, Knight announced she would be submitting her own plan that called for 545 hours.

North Carolina residents are the first Americans to cast their ballots in early voting Friday.

Statistics site 538 gives Trump a slight edge in the race, with a 50.4 percent chance of winning the state, and has the state listed as “leans Republican.” the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics now lists the state as “leans Democrat”, signifying the race is far from safe.

“We have adequate early voting hours”, he told the state board Thursday.

North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Board of Elections approved several early-voting plans Thursday that won’t expand voting this fall on Sundays, when Democrats have traditionally been more likely than Republicans to cast ballots.

A 3-2 majority on the state board agreed to more early voting hours in Northampton County, a majority-black county where the two Republicans on the local board had wanted to open just one site. “[.] We support any effort to expand ballot access and make voting more easily accessible for legally registered voters”. The court had emphasized how scaling back early voting days meant removing the opportunity for some Sunday voting popular with black residents and predominantly black churches through “souls to the polls” efforts.

“The leadership of the Republicans have attempted to manipulate the county plans after they lost” at the courts, voting rights activist Bob Hall with Democracy North Carolina told reporters before the hearing began.

Elections officials felt the pressure: Randolph County Board of Elections Chairman Bill McAnulty, a Republican, said he “got accused of being a traitor and everything else by the Republican Party” for supporting expanded early voting hours.

According to the Board of Elections, as of September 8, 152,130 voters were registered as Hispanics, or 2.27 percent of North Carolina’s electorate. Overall, the plan reduces early voting hours by 348 in the 2012 election to to 323 hours.

Wake County’s electorate comprises more than 10 percent of the state’s 6.7 million voters and includes the capital of Raleigh. Early voting now covers 17 days, up from 10, per the court order.

Stone said this morning that county elections officials would follow any instructions from the state board.

State board members Thursday were wary of eliminating Sunday voting in counties that used it in 2012 out of concern attorneys that sued over the 2013 law would go back to court and complain the board wasn’t following the spirit of the ruling.

First, a federal court invalidated large parts of NC election laws rewritten in 2013, including the cutting of early voting down to 10 days.

The schedules for early voting are in dispute in 33 of the state’s 100 counties following a federal appeals court decision that struck down the voter identification laws that had been passed by Republicans.

Making the case for less early voting, Mecklenburg election board member Liz McDowell said the lack of precinct judges at early voting sites leads to problems such as “voter harassment”.