voting rights

After reading about changes made in Watauga County, I was prompted to write a letter to the Orange County Board of Elections after several constituents voiced concerns about decision making in other counties. Below is that letter.

Dear Members of the Orange County Board of Elections,

I am writing in response to concerns voiced to me by constituents in the Orange County community after actions taken by the Watauga County Board of Elections and the Pasquotank County Board of Elections.

This week the Watauga County Board of Elections took action, which consolidated three precincts into one large precinct numbering nearly 10,000 voters and where the polling place has only 35 parking spaces. They then took action to reduce early voting to four days and eliminated early voting at the Appalachian State University campus. All of these actions were made in secret and not shared with the Democratic member of the Board, yet the Watauga County GOP chairwoman was fully aware of the coming actions. To add insult to injury, the Board did not allow verbal comment from the public, instead opting for written comment only.

It’s about to get a lot harder to vote in Orange County, at least for some of us.

The Republican majority in the General Assembly clearly feels that the racist, anti-woman, anti-urban, and very anti-liberal redistricting which took place last year didn’t do enough to solidify their entrenched majority. Now they’re hard at work systematically disenfranchising people who are unlikely to vote for them. Stringent voter identification requirements, shortened early voting, and other impediments to voting have been proposed in the General Assembly and are all likely to pass.

But of particular note to us in Orange County is the aptly-numbered Senate Bill 666. The most significant change in SB 666 isn’t in chapter 163 which governs elections; rather, it’s a change to the tax code: