You can now preview your actual ballot for the November election online, at the website of the State Board of Elections. Use this link for registered voters; enter your first and last names only, as they appear on the registration rolls; enter your county if you have a relatively common name; don’t enter the birth date – and submit. A set of people with your name will come up, select the right one and submit, or maybe your own screen will pop up immediately. At the end of your profile will be a question, “Eligible to Vote?” which should have “Yes” next to it. If not, then you should call your county board of elections and ask what’s up with your registration. Farther down will be a link to a list of your political districts (“My Districts”) and then a separate link to “My Sample Ballot.” Click and review. Voila!
If you want to see the ballots for other counties, you can go to the master page of ballot varieties, organized by county. Wake County has 102 different variations, largely because so many precincts are split between two political districts, thanks to the General Assembly’s radical redistricting plans. Cumberland County has 81 ballot variations and Guilford County has a mind-boggling 121. Little Wayne County has 43, but heavily white Lincoln County and majority black Hertford County each have only 1 ballot style for everyone in the county. These differences reflect the racially polarizing character of the zig-zagging redistricting maps that all-too frequently segregate groups of blacks from whites in the same precincts, particularly in precincts where African Americans are 15% to 45% of the voting-age population and have a history of achieving political influence in alliance with white voters. Computerized apartheid.
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