24 Comments

All true, but they also need to shore up the student vote by tackling poor information among poll workers and among college students…yesterday.

Some polling places in NC are erroneously telling college students that their student ID isn’t sufficient to vote. If the school has provided a list of on-campus students to the county, then the student ID is sufficient. Josh Stein & the universities need to be singing this from the rooftops. And students from other states CAN vote in NC if they are living in NC and enrolled at a NC university.

A poll worker told my son he couldn’t vote with his student ID, so he showed her the precise language on the state board of elections website explaining that he could. She still wasn’t convinced until she asked another poll worker.

Voters need to arrive at the polls with Information. In some cases, they may have to insist upon their right to vote.

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Your prediction that the rural turnout frenzy was broken probably isn’t aging well.

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

It's a tough situation for the Dems in NC. Maybe the way forward is to inject black men with more experimental substances under threat of job loss, then hire some stunning and brave black women to hector them into voting?

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TICK LOL TOCK RFLMAO TICK HAHA TOCK

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I don't understand the "shoot the messenger" mentality when Thomas Mills is alerting NC Dems of low Black turnout in early voting. The John Locke Foundation is providing a service by reporting the demographic numbers. There's still time to encourage Black turnout without jumping to conclusions and hasty analysis about why turnout has been lower in the first 5 days of early voting than in 2020. The high turnout among young women is certainly encouraging.

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What NC GOP voter suppression are you referring to? Can you give an example?

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I have a couple of observations:

1) How does anyone know a voter's racial identity for the purposes of voting except for the voter's self-identification with particular demographics? I am African American and a Woman; however, because of a long history of NC GOP voter suppression and obstruction tactics aimed at minorities, I switched my "identification" to "UNDESIGNATED" for race/gender/ethnicity. I have already voted. Am I showing up in the AA vote total? I don't know how I would. Consider how many other AA voters may have thought along the same lines that I did and changed their demographic information. See also that I checked the demographics for both of my adult and voting daughters. One of them is listed as "two or more races," and the other is listed as "White". If you were to ask them are they an AA voter, each would certainly answer in the affirmative.

2) While Mills states that the data is coming from the State Board of Elections, he indicates that he's using Carolina Vote Tracker at carolinaelections.com/tracker to compare data from election to election. I notice that that site is "a Project of the John Locke Foundation." Suffice to say that I don't trust the John Locke Foundation as far as I can throw them (and I can't throw for crap), and I refuse to place much stock in their numbers or reporting.

Let's all take a collective breath. Do not panic. Keep organizing, encouraging, working on, and celebrating people actually voting in the African American community and beyond. We've got this.

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You make a very good point about Voter suppression impacting how people fill out their voter registration forms.

I have done two shifts as a poll greeter - Sat. morning and Mon. afternoon - and there certainly has not been any shortage of AA women voting at this polling place. And the ones who stopped to talk to me were certainly fired up!

I also volunteered Sunday afternoon as a poll observer at this same location and "souls to the polls" was alive and well! I'll be volunteering again this coming Sunday, but I've been scheduled at a different polling place.

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What are your sources on this article? It is might presumptuous to write such a scathing article and do not have credible evidence to back it up. Please elaborate as the other party is spreading less than truthful information and I would hope that this is not presenting anything less than truthful.

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author

I don't think the article is scathing. The numbers are just alarming. The numbers come from the State Board of Elections. The tool I used to compare election years is Carolina Vote Tracker. https://carolinaelections.com/tracker/61

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Please link the numbers to the State BoE. I cannot find a demographic breakdown of early voting numbers on the State BoE website and I do NOT trust any analysis from the John Locke Foundation without a direct link to the source of their numbers.

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Are you using up to date figures? Updated for the recent Sunday of voting, which (because of souls to the polls) boosted black turnout? If you did account for that, then you're right that the turnout is a a concern, but too many people take the first days of early voting (before Sunday) and conclude that black turnout is destined to be low.

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Yes. I used the first four days of early voting, including Sunday.

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Thomas, perhaps you should block Paula Wolf from commenting. She wants to grind some old axes when we need to be working hard. The data is apparent regarding an enthusiasm deficit for Harris/Walz but as you say, there is still time to turn this around. I am white myself. Perhaps Trump-Musk are targeting black voters with false information about Harris's record of allegedly incarcerating black men while the DA in San Francisco. I am going to get myself a Mo Green t shirt and start canvassing on behalf of Mo in black neighborhoods in Durham where I live while also mentioning the rest of the ballot of course. The race for Superintendent of Public Instruction is critical. We cannot have Morrow in that position. If we can generate MOmentum, then that should redound to the benefit of the rest of the Democratic ticket including Harris/Walz.

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I wrote 100+ postcards for Mo that went out about a week before early voting started.

I have been to several in-person events with Mo and he absolutely stands out as the MOST qualified for this this position - not just in this current election but more qualified than several prior superintendents!

I had already done a couple of shifts at my early voting site handing out blue ballots to voters. I am strongly encouraging voters to vote the entire ticket including Mo.

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Thomas Mills is someone who decided he knows everything about politics and is making money spewing his analyses. He also made money when he created a totally untrue and personal attack against Raleigh City Councillor Stef Mendell when she ran for reelection years ago. The Apartment Association paid him, so he did his job. Trump will blame the Jews and Mills will blame the Blacks. There is no data yet to back any of this up.

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This was not helpful. Let it go, Paula.

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Or, it’s not a pandemic and people are going to vote on Election Day. You really don’t know but your post accomplished its goal and got engagement. Congrats for that.

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Oct 21·edited Oct 21

Thomas, I believe the issue is blacks believe neither Republicans nor Democrats will help them, so what's the use of voting? Or they figure Trump will win Still you have 12 days to make up the ground. Hopefully you have communicated to the Harris Walz campaign Let's also not forget some of those republicans who've voted are Never Trumpers who chose Harris. It's the unaffiliated who are the unknown

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How about Anson County?

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If you want to help, I suggest making a donation to Center for Common Ground (https://www.centerforcommonground.org/) which focuses on engaging BIPoC voters in southern states. I wrote postcards for their Reclaim Our Voteprogram. I think it is past the deadline for postcards, but there are still opportunities to phonebank (https://www.centerforcommonground.org/phonebanks). You can select which county from the available list and fill out a sign up form. I checked and they are not accepting new volunteers to text.

You can also donate or volunteer with the New North Carolina Project (https://www.nncpaf.org/).

This link is to their Action First PAC which is a a 501(c)4 organization and is not tax deductible. (This type of entity is more effective this late in the election cycle).

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I am so upset to read this !!

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Laura, see my post about how you can help turn out Black voters.

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Where is your post?

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