Writing at CarolinaJournal.com, JLF’s Becki Gray refutes the Left’s myth that recent election reforms are designed to suppress voting in North Carolina.
You’ve heard it from the Left. You’ve heard it from the press and on TV. It’s all over the Internet. The Voter Suppression Act. Disenfranchised voters. One of the nation’s most restrictive voter ID laws. Sweeping. Controversial. Restrictive. Fiercely contested. Assault on democracy.
Before the General Assembly convened in January, North Carolina’s voting laws were some of the most liberal in the country. Now that legislators have enacted new election-related laws, they’re still among the most liberal in the country; more liberal than New York’s, for example.
The new voting and elections laws bring us closer in line with the rest of the country. House Bill 589 makes substantive changes to our election laws that many believe will restore integrity and trust in our voting system.
Gray uses facts — not Leftist rhetoric — to debunk the media narrative. Among them is this:
Early voting: fewer days but the same number of hours. Fifteen states allow neither early voting nor no-excuse absentee voting. Thirty-two states have early voting periods ranging from four days to 45 days prior to election day, with an average of 19 days. North Carolina allows 10 days but requires the same number of hours of early voting that were available in 2012 and 2010, when the early voting period was 17 days.
Facts are very inconvenient things.
