The missing 40,000 NC voters
by Tom Sullivan
An analysis posted Thursday at Daily Kos found that since Pat McCrory moved into the North Carolina governor's mansion, voter registration applications received through state public service agencies (as required by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993) have fallen off drastically. DocDawg and colleagues did some data mining:
Finding 1: A systematic sharp decline in new voter registrations originating from Public Assistance (PA) programs began on or about January 2013 and continues to this day
Figure 1, below, summarizes statewide new voter registrations originating from PA programs, by month, and compares these with new voter registrations originating from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
Fig. 1: North Carolina new voter registrations originating via Public Assistance programs (top panel) and via the Dept. of Motor Vehicles (bottom panel) from May 2010 through March 2015. Red and green horizontal lines indicate overall averages for the periods May 2010 through December 2012 (green lines; “Pre-McCrory Average”) and January 2013 through March 2015 (red lines; “McCrory Average”). Months for which reports are missing, or contain incomplete data, are excluded from these averages (5/2010, 9/2010, 3/2011, 5/2011, 8/2011, 5/2012, 6/2012, and 3/2015).
In all, "an overall deficit of 39,177 ‘missing voters’ (i.e., NC citizens who would have been registered had this decline not occurred)." Checking for benign explanations, the study finds that the decline does not appear to be connected to an improving economy and "occurs statewide, not merely in a handful of counties."
Other groups sniffing around the same trees have put the state on notice:
Democracy NC, Action NC, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute sent a notice letter today to the State Board of Elections and the Department of Health and Human Services, advising both of their findings and giving the state 90 days to comply with the law or face yet another voting rights lawsuit.
North Carolina is already in the throes voting rights battles in the courts. Three federal lawsuits — including one brought by the Justice Department — and another action in state court, all concerning the state’s so called “Monster Voting Law,” are now pending.
The state is also fighting a challenge to its 2011 voter redistricting plan, a case that is now back in state Supreme Court after being remanded by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The groups' field investigation at 19 DHHS offices in 11 North Carolina counties last October found:
• Three-quarters of interviewees received no offer of voter registration of any kind. Specifically, 146 clients (74.5%) did not see a voter registration question on their forms, were not verbally asked whether they would like to receive a voter registration application, and did not receive a voter registration application.
• At offices that claimed to distribute voter registration applications to everyone, 74% of interviewees stated that they had neither (i) received an application, nor (ii) declined the opportunity to register to vote, either verbally or in writing.
• At the four offices that claimed to ask each client whether s/he would like a voter registration application, 92% of the interviewees stated that they had not seen or responded to a voter registration question on their forms, and 93% of interviewees stated that no one had verbally offered them a registration application.
The groups noted that:
Although the recent drop coincides with McCrory’s first two years in office, the groups point out that a similar drop occurred 10 years ago when the state was under Democratic control. Voting-rights organizations at that time prompted the state to do a better job of increasing registrations from public assistance agencies.
Far be it from me to suggest the big drop-off in voter registrations this time is part of an organized plan by the NCGOP to reduce participation by poor, Democratic voters. That's what North Carolina's photo ID bill was designed for. DHHS has simply been a scandal factory since McCrory's under-qualified cronies arrived.
Hanlon's razor may apply here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."