A report released today pinpoints potential hot spots in North Carolina where Tea Party-inspired volunteers may try to disrupt the upcoming election by questioning the legitimacy of voters, particularly at heavily African-American polling places. The report by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights says there are 286 volunteers signed up with Texas-based True the Vote and its affiliates in North Carolina. It provides details to indicate their numbers by county, as well as their associations with other far-right organizations. One of the authors told a convention of NC NAACP leaders that the report shows “the highly partisan and political agenda to deny African Americans and Latinos, specifically, the right to vote.” He warned that the volunteers and groups here may attempt to replicate the tactics used by the Texas group to challenge the right of individual voters to cast a ballot, which takes precinct officials away from other duties to resolve, slows down voting lines, and generates negative rumors that depress voter turnout. The maps show concentrations of volunteers in major urban counties, but also in Henderson, Brunswick, and Cabarrus counties.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Southern Studies discovered that True the Vote gave $5,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee this summer, even though it claims it is nonpartisan and a tax-exempt nonprofit. ISS also features information in this week’s Institute Index that draws on the latest chapter in the court fight against the discriminatory redistricting plans: for example, the number of voters wrongly assigned to a district because of the complex way the plans split precincts = 2,056 voters in just the 6 counties studied.
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