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You’ve probably heard about the Tea Party takeover of North Carolina that’s so bad it’s actually hurting the party’s national brand.
Since it took complete control of the state government for the first time in more than a century, the state’s GOP has passed a wish list of right-wing legislation designed to gut public education, punish the unemployed and reward the governor’s cronies. They even sneaked restrictions on women’s health into bills that were supposed to be about Sharia law and motorcycle safety.
But it’s the Republican attack on voting rights just weeks after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act that should concern and offend all Americans.
The nation’s worst voter suppression law is bad enough, but that’s only part of the story.
On her show Thursday, Rachel Maddow uncovered the bureaucratic war the state’s Republicans are also waging on the rights of minorities and students to vote. Governor Pat McCrory has filled the state election board with partisan Republicans who have in turn done the same thing with local election boards. The result is purposely closing polling stations to undesirable voters (like students and Democrats in general) and directly challenging the voting eligibility of every student at a historically black college.
You have to see this to believe it. This is why thousands of North Carolinians have risked arrest to protest what’s going on in this state, on what’s known as Moral Mondays. And this is why those protesters are more popular than the governor.
(h/t to the irreplaceable voting rights source Ari Berman.)
Photo: Screenshot from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show
