title:  NC Republicans PROUDLY Brag About How Well Their Voter Suppression Tactics Are Working
text: While the Supreme Court blocked the worst of North Carolina s voter suppression laws (including their voter ID law, and their decisions to cut early voting and end same-day registration across the state), the state s Republican Party still managed to find ways to cut early voting to harm the state s black citizens, as well as intimidate them into not voting. Sickeningly, it seems to have worked.And they re bragging about it in a press release. Openly. Loudly. Proudly. Gleefully. The title reads,  NCGOP Sees Encouraging Early Voting, Obama/Clinton Coalition Tired, Fail to Resonate in North Carolina. That would all well and good if it were actually true. What they re really doing, though, is bragging about lower black voter turnout and higher white voter turnout.  North Carolina Obama Coalition Crumbling,  is the heading of one section of the release, and it highlights the decrease in black voter turnout in the state between 2012 and now.Image via NC GOPSure, whites and minorities are two different demographics, but keep in mind that the Supreme Court blocked their voter suppression law because  the new provisions targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.  In response to that, Governor Pat McCrory threw a tantrum, and the state went about finding other ways of suppressing voters.The party s solution to the Supreme Court s ruling was to pressure individual county boards to limit early voting, especially Sunday voting, and many did despite the fact that the black community overwhelmingly votes early, and often on Sunday after church. The state s elections board mitigated some of these restrictions, but not all, and the black and student communities were still disproportionately harmed.Other states in the South have shown increases of black voters during early voting as much as 18 percent in one case but North Carolina saw a sharp decline:Something went very wrong for African-Americans  voting in North Carolina pic.twitter.com/ZpwjyEavmd  Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 6, 2016What s happened is that Republicans knew they d lose the state if minority voters were able to vote more easily because they tend to vote Democratic. A longtime GOP consultant even said that, if black voters voted Republican, none of these suppression tactics would ever have been considered.It s bad enough that they ve worked so hard to severely curtail the right to vote in order to maintain control of the state, and try and deliver a White House win to Herr Trump. To openly brag about it like this, though? They just reinforced the fact that this was literally about suppressing votes, not ensuring voting rights remained intact and without fraud.Featured image by Brian Blanco via Getty Images