Busy week of travel but interspersed with a couple days off, at least for those of us on the Greenville team. Killian and I made an unaccompanied trip out to Greenville this Saturday so as to give Jake some much-needed rest. Given the stultifying heat outside, we thought our luck was pretty good — registering nearly as many voters as we did at the biggest university in the state (i.e. State).
Monday, we packed a number of meetings into a jaunt out to Greenville. We talked with Calvin Henderson of the NAACP about how to best serve the communities that will benefit from additional voting sites and voter information. We made plans to attend the Pitt County Board of Elections meeting — as always, we’re positive but reserved with our predictions for the meeting. Now that HAVA funds have been definitively turned down, we’re reevaluating what constitutes a reasonable goal for these meetings. Right now, our main push is for more Sunday voting and one more week of early voting.
In stark contrast to their disappointing HAVA decision, the legislature had everyone in the office celebrating on Tuesday — the pernicious Photo ID Bill was not passed! Hundreds of thousands of voters in North Carolina just barely avoided this unreasonable, anti-democratic block to their voting actions. But avoid it they did, and we’re thrilled to see some of our work pay off. But the struggle continues and we’re already looking at ways that future legislatures may bring it up, and how to counter those backward steps for our state. Currently, we’re looking at how to use the Department of Justice’s rulings on Photo ID in other states (i.e. that it is unconstitutional) to combat in our state.
Now we’re finishing up the week, after an appropriately-timed holiday, by trying to figure out how to get more involved in the Pasquotank/Elizabeth City area, as well as how to be more effective with voter reg. A very exciting week with some encouraging omens!
Griffin Bur
Greenville Team
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